Self-learning Science
How to self-learn science? That is the goal of this page, currently under construction.
The first thing to keep in mind for science at home (or homeschool), is that a computational research environment is one of those essential elements. To do so, you should invest in a quality computer. For Windows, I recommend getting 32 Gigs (GiB) of RAM (memory). For the other two major OS's, you can do with 16 GiB of RAM. The processor also matters, though RAM tends to be the bottleneck.
Regarding Linux, there are Ubuntu Linux laptops available from Lenovo, as of the time of this writing (11/11/2025).
Ubuntu is a popular choice among government and academic scientists, in part due to its support period (10 years standard with
Pro) for LTS releases and security features. Windows still is the predominant OS for many corporate research environments.
You also can't go wrong with Apple products. One of the labs I worked at ran iMacs. Most scientific software programs are cross-platform, nowadays. However, it seems Linux tends to require the least resources, leaving more memory for your scientific programs to use (Most supercomputers run Linux.).
Calculus/Stats for Science
Maxima with
wxMaxima GUI (Ubuntu package: wxmaxima)
TeX Live (for math typesetting; Ubuntu packages: texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra)
Texmaker GUI for TeX Live (Ubuntu package: texmaker)
Dover Books on Mathematics (series)
Astronomy
Stellarium Web (also available as a
stand-alone program, Ubuntu package: stellarium)
Biology
National Human Genome Research Institute (formerly the Human Genome Project)
Chemistry
Theo Gray's Mad Science and
The Elements by Theodore Gray
Avogadro2 Molecular viewer (Ubuntu packages: avogadro openbabel apbs)
Environmental Sciences
QGIS GIS/Cartography software (Ubuntu packages: qgis grass)
US Environmental Protection Agency Education Page
US Geological Survey Education Page
US National Parks Service
Physics
The Physics of Everyday Phenomena by W. Thomas Griffith