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12:22 AM

@ACuriousMind: Congrats on the latest Steward badge ;)

1:02 AM

@alarge It's a bit funny when physicists, mathematicians, and other academics qualify topics as "taught in every/any first course in <field of study>" as if academic curricula are uniform across time and space.

@alarge I didn't hear about the Ising model or Kadanoff renormalization in my undergrad stat mech course or my grad school stat mech course.

Kyle Kanos

I heard of the Ising model in undergrad

I'm pretty sure it's in Schroeder's text.

IDK, that book got lost in my first move :(

6 hours later…

David Z

7:27 AM

@ChrisWhite yeah, that's true. If the comment was just meant as "hey, FYI this would also go on Worldbuilding" then it would be totally reasonable. I'm guessing that's not the case, though; I suspect that many/most of the people who upvoted the comment (and/or the poster) did so because they thought it was off topic for us.

Amey Shukla

7:43 AM

Wow this place have been really inactive for a while.

Anyway guys, is there a good book covering from Normal Mechanics to Quantam Mechanics with relativity in between?

I have got Halliday.

Anything other that's cool?

Waffle's Crazy Peanut

@AmeyShuklam: If you're looking for an introduction, I suggest "Feynman lectures"

Amey Shukla

8:32 AM

@Waffle'sCrazyPeanut Anything Else? I am reading it. But I want something well mroe descriptive.

I want something that's detailed.

Tell's the quantam mechanics side of Physics along classical mechanics

and that kind of stuff.

Waffle's Crazy Peanut

@AmeyShukla: I haven't read much, but I can point you to a link. Have you checked our resource-recommendations?

like this one

Q: What is a good introductory book on quantum mechanics?

I'm really interested in quantum theory and would like to learn all that I can about it. I've followed a few tutorials and read a few books but none satisfied me completely. I'm looking for introductions for beginners which do not depend heavily on linear algebra or calculus, or which provide a s...

Still, no one can beat our list of books :)

157

Q: Book recommendations

Every once in a while, we get a question asking for a book or other educational reference on a particular topic at a particular level. This is a meta-question that collects all those links together. If you're looking for book recommendations, this is probably the place to start. All the question...

resource-recommendations faq

Amey Shukla

I'll look at it thanks.

Waffle's Crazy Peanut

You're welcome :)

alarge

8:52 AM

@DanielSank Those things are not necessarily a part of a course on thermodynamics, but I'm very surprised to hear that you didn't have Ising in a grad school stat mech course. I guess you don't absolutely need to go through it, but I don't think I have ever seen a book that introduces the basic techniques of stat mech and didn't use Ising as an example.

alarge

9:11 AM

Now that I think about it, though, older books might have had a different focus on things, and might have dealt more with what I would associate with thermodynamics.

Danu

10:05 AM

@alarge any first course lol, must've been in a theoretical thermodynamics course instead ;)

@KyleKanos You mean 1. Nf3? I always play 1. d4 followed almost always by c4

@alarge What if I told you most students here don't do any grad level stat. mech. course :P

0celo7

10:23 AM

Today I may or may not meet my roommate. Do I want a STEM person or someone to broaden my horizons?

Danu

11:02 AM

@0celo7 Not a STEM person

0celo7

11:25 AM

@Danu For the reason given or something else?

Danu

Reason given

You'll meet a lot of STEM people during your studies

it's easy to make friends there

Physics Meta

Q: Can we have more close votes?

The last few days I've been logging in only first thing in the morning (I'm on holiday, and the family get annoyed if I'm on the Physics SE all day :-) and there have been more than 20 questions with close votes in the review queue. So all my 20 close votes get used up before I've even finished ...

discussion feature-request

1 hour later…

alarge

12:40 PM

@Danu, A first course on stat mech is what I meant, not thermo. The former is probably often taken at advanced undergrad or grad level, and I am a bit surprised to hear that most don't take it at your uni, especially given the focus you have on theoretical/mathematical physics (or maybe its just you rather than the uni)

Danu

12:59 PM

@alarge I was joking: I meant my stat mech course in undergrad did not cover it.

@alarge It's not a mandatory course, and many of the high energy physics-interested people don't take it.

4 hours later…

user54412

4:49 PM

@0celo7 As long as you avoid pre-meds, you'll be fine.

Kyle Kanos

5:54 PM

@ChrisWhite: BTW: you were "worried" about me passing you on votes some time ago. well, it happened: physics.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&filter=all

gonenc

6:05 PM

How does the community "user/mod" decides if a post is a duplicate?

see eg

-1

Q: How to make wormhole?

Today in my Physics Class, My teacher gave us an introduction of relativity and I found this very fascinating. He Said that its very hard to make a wormhole because it requires a lot of energy. I am very interesting in knowing How wormhole works and How can we make one and why we can't make the ...

spacetime astrophysics wormholes

Kyle Kanos

147

Q: Can we clarify to the OP that their question is not yet closed and the duplicates are only suggestions?

I keep seeing custom flags in the queue from question askers who are incredibly irritated because there is a big, prominent box at the top of their question. It's just a list of other questions which may have the answer they desire, and is only even displayed to them because the question is not c...