Best books for JEE Advanced Physics: A Comparison

By Aman Goel

Here's a comprehensive discussion of all the good books for JEE Advanced Physics that you could use in order to achieve the same.

Best books for JEE Advanced: Physics paper in the JEE Advanced exam can be a bit tough at times. To ace the Physics of JEE Advanced you need to have a very clear understanding of concepts. The questions asked would make you derive things from scratch. A good understanding of calculus and a few other mathematical topics is also a must for solving such questions in physics. These factors clearly imply that the books for JEE Advanced physics need to be chosen with utmost care. You need to properly analyze your situation and get books that would aid you in acing JEE Advanced physics with flying colours.

Concepts of Physics by HC Verma

This book is a really old one and has been in use for a really long time. This book may not be the perfect material for JEE Advanced physics but it definitely helps in setting a firm foundation for the subject. With this book, you will be able to understand various concepts of Physics. There is a concise theory provided at the start of each chapter in this book which is followed by a few solved examples. Next is a set of questions divided into various sections.

There are some good conceptual questions that would help you revise the concepts. Other than that there are various numerical type questions too. The best ones are the conceptual ones only as they will make you draw analogies with real-life situations and they are good enough to test your understanding of the concept.

This book will help you in building basics but for the thorough and exhaustive practice of questions, you would have to refer to some other book too. So, you can use it as a reference book for starting a new topic. But do use one other book along with it.

Understanding Physics by DC Pandey

This is also one of the most famous JEE Advanced physics books. DC Pandey’s books come in two versions:

• 5 unit wise books
• New Pattern Physics

The unit wise books have got detailed theory and explanation of concepts along with a lot of solved examples. The theory is explained from a very basic level to an advanced level. Apart from that, there are a lot of unsolved questions that will help you ace JEE Advanced physics. There are hints and solutions too at the end of the book.

The unit wise books might be a bit expensive but they are a complete package and will help you if you are looking to start from the basic level. The new pattern physics book by DC Pandey has got a lot of different types of questions. There are all possible types of questions present and that too in a good mix. You would find difficult as well as JEE main level questions in it. However, the new pattern physics book lacks theory and you can get it if you have other coaching materials or notes for theory already.

If you are looking to get a book that has extremely high-level questions then this book won’t help you. This book can help you in developing a good understanding of the subjects with a good combination of all types and levels of questions. Choose from either of the two versions depending upon your need for theory.

Problems in General Physics by IE Irodov

This book is considered one of the toughest books for JEE Advanced physics. This book isn’t meant for beginners and must be done only after a complete practice of some standard JEE book or coaching material. Irodov contains questions only and there is no theory along with them. The questions are long and tough. They require you to know the concepts in great detail. Most of the questions combine concepts from multiple chapters to make them tougher.

You should go for this book only when your entire JEE Main Syllabus and JEE Advanced syllabus is complete from some standard book. All the questions of this book might not be within the scope of JEE Advanced and so you must do this book with discretion else you might waste time on something which isn’t supposed to be done for JEE Advanced. Solving this book would make your JEE Advanced physics excellent and perfect.

Cengage Physics

This book is similar to DC Pandey's physics in lot of aspects. There are separate unit wise books containing detailed theory and solved examples. There is a separate book containing questions only. You can choose either of them depending on your situation. The book only with questions also has solutions to all the problems in the book. The mix of questions is good but you won’t find many or any mind-boggling or tough problems that would test your concepts. This is a decent book for those who are not looking to go for a higher level and want a decent preparation for JEE Advanced physics. The exhaustive set of questions would help in increasing your speed and accuracy.

Depending upon the elaborate comparison present above, you can choose either of these books. You must remember to practice a lot of questions no matter which book you choose. The theory must be done nicely as physics requires a really strong concept building. Don’t waste time on things that are irrelevant. Physics requires effort and patience so don’t lose interest midway and keep putting maximum effort throughout. Whenever you start to lose interest try relating theory with interesting real-life examples.

About the Author:

Aman Goel is a co-founder at a Tech Start-up. He holds a BTech in Computer Science Engineering from IIT Bombay with a JEE Advanced AIR 33 (Year 2013).

During his free time, he enjoys writing articles/blogs. He is an Entrepreneur, Coder, Speed-cuber, gamer, and fan of Air crash investigation!

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