It has been quite a while ago since I left school, but whenever I come across a technical physics book/journal paper I will still take a good, hard look. Alas, technical books in physical form are hard to come by, especially physics. Not many people studying physics and even less of them enjoy the equations and the convoluted dense arguments employed by the physicists to elucidate the Nature.
But with Internet this has changed, somewhat. Technical materials are now aplenty, if you know where to find. This makes self studying physics possible because information is within your fingertips. This is so unlike many years ago when you have to hunt through all the university book stores or order materials from overseas just to get to the books that you want.
But reading technical journals and books in front of a computer, with its glaring LCD screen, is still a subpar experience. For this you need a proper eReader, and a big screen one because most technical books — with all the equations and graphs and diagrams– are presentable only on A4 size paper. Conventional eReader like Kindle ( 6 inch) is too small, 10.3 inch ( A4 paper size) is just about right.
So here, in this post, I will detail my experience in reading a physics textbook on Onyx Boox Note 3 ( 10.3 inch). I find that this is the best way if you want to study technical subjects electronically.
The very first step is to upload it to Google Drive, and open them on Onyx Boox. You can easily download the Google Drive App from the Google Play Store.
Let’s pick a book, say “Modern Electrodynamics“
And importantly, we need to use NeoReader V3.0, the built-in PDF reader app on Onyx Boox to open it. Don’t use Google Drive PDF viewer because the experience will be subpar.
When you open the book using NeoReader V3.0, it will be available on the local hard disk of your eReader. This is important because it allows us to scribble notes on the book itself, an experience that reminiscence the note taking experience on a real physical book in the good old days.
Let’s open the book on our Onyx Note 3! Wua, modern PDF ebook comes built-in with Table of Content that facilitates navigation.
Reading on an eReader is a lot pleasing to the eyes that staring the same text on a computer screen, despite that the equations can still look scary.
For technical content we often need a pen, as we need to scribble our thoughts, to rederive some results, or just highlight some texts. For this, the Boox pen that comes with the eReader is super handy, as it allows one to write down the derivation steps to fill in the gap, just like how you use a pencil to do the same on a paper.
And the notes that you scribbles will stay with you, even after you close and and reopen the same file. So when you are done with you the book, you can also pass the same ebook to your junior, so that he can also benefit from your notes and your wisdom. How cool is that?
Remember, you can only do this with a local PDF file in NeoReader. Opening the same file in Google Drive won’t allow you to do the same, unfortunately. All the writing features only available locally.
I’ve accumulated some 10 physics books in my drive, and it will take a while for me to go through all of them. With this I can fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a physicist, finally…
