Most universities follow the traditional roadmap, which follows the historical "order" of the theories.
| Classical Mechanics | kinematics, forces, circular motion, energy, momentum, rotations, harmonic motion, Newton's laws, Lagrangian Mechanics, Hamiltonian Mechanics, phase space, configuration space | |||||||||||||||||
| Electrodynamics | Coulomb's Law, electric circuits, Maxwell's equations | |||||||||||||||||
| Special Relativity | Minkowski space, time dilation, proper time, Lorentz group, Poincare group, inertial frames of reference | |||||||||||||||||
| Quantum Mechanics | double slit experiment, Schrödinger's equations, canonical commutation relations, particle in a box, perturbation theory, Heisenberg picture, tunneling | |||||||||||||||||
| Quantum Field Theory | Klein-Gordan equation, Dirac equation, second quantization, scattering theory, path integral formalism | |||||||||||||||||
| General Relativity | Einstein equation, Schwarzschild metric | |||||||||||||||||
There are several math topics that are usually learned parallel to the theories:
| Classical Mechanics | trigonometric functions, differential calculus, integral calculus, differential equations, variational calculus, Legendre transforms | |||||||||||||||||
| Electrodynamics | vector calculus, complex numbers, systems of linear equations, linear algebra, Fourier transforms | |||||||||||||||||
| Special Relativity | group theory | |||||||||||||||||
| Quantum Mechanics | Hilbert spaces, special functions | |||||||||||||||||
| Quantum Field Theory | Taylor approximations, distributions, Greens functions | |||||||||||||||||
| General Relativity | differential geometry | |||||||||||||||||
In addition, there are other topics that are often covered in "experimental physics" courses: