A co-worker asked me for recommendations on math/physics books/resources for her gifted and talented son, who is in the 7th grade and starting to study calculus and physics.

Here was the off the top of my head answer (though I had to look up URLs and prices):

There was a difficult book I started around that age, called Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter. It’s not really a text book, but a book about how math and science work, develop and interrelate. It took me literally years to work on and finish, and if you were to get it for your kid, I would advise you not to be at all discouraged if he did the same, putting it aside from time to time and then returning.

Additionally, I ended up learning a lot of my math with software. The two that really stand out for me were Mathematica (Student Edition: $135) and MatLab (Student Edition: $99). Both of these softwares are pretty involved, and I didn’t end up working with them until I was in college proper, so beware, and don’t spend money you can’t afford on this. They both allow you to graph and animate and deconstruct extremely detailed mathematical equations with a computer’s help. They can also help solve equations.

I also learned math/physics because of related hobbies.

One big direct draw for me was the science/art of fractals, which use graphics to graph complex numbers. Fractals can be really beautiful and make for hours of zooming around exploring the various equations’ graphical spaces. The software I used was called FractInt which was free and very powerful but also not very user friendly. I understand there are alternatives now. More reading: Wikipedia & Wolfram Research’s Mathworld. Animations on YouTube: Anim 1 & Anim 2. More software: WinFeed (free) - Fractal Extreme ($35) – haven’t tried either one of these.

Physics:
I don’t know any good books off hand, though I’ll look at my library to see if there are any cool ones that might be interesting.

I do know that there are some good software alternatives.

Crayon Physics Deluxe looks like it may come out soon. If you go to the web page, you can find a link to the prototype, as well as an embedded video to watch that shows how the prototype works.

I do have licensed what is essentially a bridge-building and gadgets building game, Armadillo Run. Very well done, I think. I think it’s about $20.

I’ll look for more games like this too. I’m pretty sure there are some I missed, or that I just didn’t have time to look at.

I hope this helps. It’s sort of all I can come up with off the top of my head.

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