I've had some professors who have known their subject deeply but don't know how to teach it.  Dr. Shankar has not only the gift of clearly teaching the subject matter but also unexpectedly throwing in tidbits of dry physics humor which students thrive on. (I'm a firm believer that a sense of dry physics humor is a sign of high intelligence!  Not to brag, but as a former high school physics teacher I used it quite often myself!)<br><br>For a person doing a self-study, FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICS BOOKS 1 AND 2 are awesome!  Presentation is given in a conversational style that makes you feel as if you are in the classroom as a beginning  undergraduate physics student in Dr. Shankar's class.  The books cover a full range of topics in a rigorous way.  The books presume students have completed a course in vector calculus.  One more thing:  The newer edition  of book 2 contains a full set of problems at the end of each chapter complete with all the answers to not only the odd # problems but also the even # problems which is very important for a person working thru the book as a self-study!  (Some authors do not provide answers to any of their problems!!  Maybe they  don't know how to do the problems themselves!!)  Not only does Dr. Shankar give the answers but he also provides a complete set of solutions on a separate website.<br><br>Topics for the 2 books are::<br><br>FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICS-BOOK 1- MECHANICS, RELATIVITY, THERMODYNAMICS:<br>Newton's Laws of Motion, Conservation of Energy, Kepler's Laws of Celestial Motion, Conservation of Momentum, Rotational Dynamics, Special Relativity, Mathematical Methods, Waves, Fluids, Heat, The 3 Laws of Thermodynamics.<br><br>FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICS-BOOK 2- ELECTROMAGNETISM, OPTICS, QUANTUM MECHANICS:<br>Coulomb's Law, Electric Fields, Gauss's Law-Theory and Application, Electric Potential, Conductors and Capacitors, Circuits and Currents, Lorentz Forces, Biot-Savart Law, Faraday and Lenz's Law, AC and LRC Circuits, E &amp; M Waves and Relativity, Geometric Optics, Mirrors &amp; Lenses, Quantum Mechanics, Wave &amp; Particle Theory of Light, Wave Functions, Momentum and Energy States, Quantum Dynamics.