MC Library Research Guides: Physics: Find Sources

Find Sources for Physics

American Journal of Physics
Articles on the educational and cultural aspects of physics for physics students, educators, and researchers.
Physics Magazine
From the American Physical Society (APS). Summarizes new physics research found in APS's Physical Review Journals.
Physics Today
Published by the American Institute of Physics. Covers physical science research and its applications, along with news coverage and analysis of technological advances and research.

Nature This link opens in a new window
Online edition of the weekly international science journal with archives going back to 1869.
Science Magazine This link opens in a new window
Includes Science from 1880 to the present, Science Xpress (for early breaking, electronic journal articles), Science Signaling, and more.
Scientific American This link opens in a new window
Full text access to Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the US and a leading publication for science in the general media, from 1910 to the present.

The above links include magazine articles and journal articles. Journal articles are also known as scholarly articles, or academic articles. Some journal articles are "peer reviewed," which means they've gone through an extra review process before being published.

Research Skills & Tips:

Databases for Physics:

Multidisciplinary Databases:

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Encyclopaedia Britannica This link opens in a new window
Gale Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window

RaptorSearch This link opens in a new window
RaptorSearch allows you to find items located physically at the library along with most content that MC Library subscribes to online. Results may include articles from scholarly journals, books, e-books; videos and other media, newspaper articles, and more.
O'Reilly Online Learning This link opens in a new window
Full-text E-Books and videos on a broad range of subjects in the computer applications, computer sciences, and business fields. A valid MC email address is required to access these e-books: At login, please select "Institution not listed?" and then enter your MC email (MCusername@montgomerycollege.edu). You are not required to create an account on the O'Reilly platform, but if you do, you will need to use that email address and password for subsequent access. Community users please check at the library service desk for login information for in-library use.
Handbook of Chemistry and Physics This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive one-volume reference tool for chemistry and physics, and science more generally. It can be searched or browsed through the table of contents links on the left.

Physics books recommended by the library:

Basic Physics: A self-teaching guide by Karl F. Kuhn and Frank Noschese
Learn physics at your own pace without an instructor. A practical and reader-friendly guide to understanding all basic physics concepts and terms.
Foundations of Physics by Steve Adams
A self-teaching, calculus-based introduction to the concepts of physics. Includes examples, applications, and figures to provide simple explanations of complex topics.
The handy physics answer book by Charles Liu
Questions and answers about Classical and Modern Physics topics.
No-Frills Physics by Matthew D. McCluskey
Provides everything you need to get through a basic physics course. With simple illustrations, worked problems, and short quizzes.
The World According to Physics by Jim Al-Khalili
Introduces the fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, then describes the three pillars of modern physics: quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics.

Research Skills & Tips:

Find Books and Other Sources in RaptorSearch
by Niyati Pandya Last Updated Oct 9, 2023 1147 views this year

AccessScience This link opens in a new window
An electronic version of the 9th edition of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. To view videos, look under the "Content" menu at the top left corner of the home screen.

Gale in Context: Simulations
Explore wave properties, energy conversions on a roller coaster, circuit construction, and more.
Kanopy Physics Videos
A collection of Physics videos.

Search Strategies

The MC Library has access to different kinds of search tools:

Databases: Collections of articles, videos, images, or other types of sources. Some databases cover a wide range of subject areas or source types, while others are focused narrowly on one (e.g., only science journals; only images).
Databases: Collections of articles, videos, images, or other types of sources. Some databases cover a wide range of subject areas or source types (multidisciplinary), while other databases are discipline or format based (e.g., PsycINFO or AP Images).
RaptorSearch: Searches across most of the resources that you can access through the MC Library, including the MC Library Catalog and most of our databases (including articles, videos, books, and ebooks like databases).

Use the tabs in the box above to find suggested databases or other search tools to use for a variety of types of sources.

MC students, faculty, and staff can access all of our search tools and online resources from on or off-campus. Use your MC ID # (with the letter M) to log in.

Research Skills & Tips:

How to Access Library E-Resources

Identify Different Types of Information Sources
by Niyati Pandya Last Updated Oct 9, 2023 485 views this year

Unlike Google, library databases can't understand an entire sentence. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important ideas: the keywords.

Keywords are individual words or short phrases that represent the main ideas in your topic, thesis, or research question.

Example Question: How does gravity affect the health of astronauts in space?

Keywords: gravity, astronauts, health

After you've identified your main ideas and some keywords to start with, think of additional search terms for each concept. These can be synonyms, related ideas, broader terms, or narrower terms. Since a database will match only what you type, using different terms for similar ideas can help you find more articles.

Example Search Terms:

force: motion, acceleration, Newton's laws
classical mechanics: kinetics, Newtonian, equilibrium
mass: energy, gravity, weight
light: electromagnetism, wavelength, optics

Now that you have identified keywords, you will enter them in your chosen search tool's search box. Try more than one combination to find different sources.

Use the search operators AND & OR to combine your search terms. Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase, with the words in that exact order: "social media"

Use AND between your main ideas to narrow your search (all words will be found in each source):

newton and laws and "subatomic particles"
government and regulate and Internet and "free speech"

Diagram shows overlap between gov't & free speech

Use OR to look for related search terms, in one search (at least one of the search words will be found in each source). This will increase the number of sources you find. Put related search terms in parentheses, and combine with other terms:

("speed of light" or spacetime) and objects
government and regulate and (Internet or "social media")

Diagram shows social media & internet highlighted

Research Skills & Tips:

Search Library Databases Effectively
by Niyati Pandya Last Updated Dec 6, 2023 200 views this year

Filter Results:

To make your results more manageable, use the database filters to limit your search results. For example:

Full-text access: To ensure that all items from your search results include the entire article or publication, select "full text" from filtering/refining options on the search results page.
Source types: If you know you only need peer-reviewed journal articles, select peer reviewed. Or, if you want to see only magazine articles, e-books, or another type of source, you can select only what you need.
Publication date: If your sources must be from within the last five years, you can set the year of publication to reflect that.

These options may be found in different locations of a database’s results page. In RaptorSearch, filter options are found on the left.

You can also set these options before you search from the Advanced Search screen in most databases.

Sort Results:

Most database search results will be sorted by relevance. You can change this to sort by newest first, oldest first, etc. Look for the sort options near the top of the results list.

Find Sources

This page will help you choose where and how to search for your sources. As you search, use the tips on this page to help you evaluate each source you find.