@Phase it's an EM wave. The curl is always nonzero and oscillatory.

@EmilioPisanty i havent done EM yet

Though I'd much rather not have to deal with that curl explicitly

beyond just basic-bottom-of-the-barrel Gauss' law

Like, ever

It's not gonna be pretty

Oh right I guess that makes sense

since $\nabla \times E = -D_t B$ right?

Though tbh the curl is going to be dominated by the dependence on the out-of-plane coordinate

or is there a minus sign

theres probably a minus sign

@Phase d exactly

@Phase yes

EM is funky, I cant wait to do it in lectures

Though note that at any one time the circulation around the axis is zero

What's circulation

my vector calc is patchy as hell

That's one topic to revise with care

The line integral of the vector field

Its not really revision unfortunately

Is this stuff late first year or second year?

Time to break out the Div Grad Curl And All That

@Phase depends

prolly 2nd then

Div is the sum of partial derivatives of the vector field, grad is the sum of partials of the function and curl is the cross product right?

Some UK unis do it in first year h but that's pretty rushed if you ask me

Like $\nabla \cdot E_{(x,y)}$ for a vector function is the divergence?

Yes

But those aren't great descriptions

Read the book

Wait what book

you haven't recommended one D:

wait

"div grad curl and all that"

just noticed the capitalisation

amazon.com/Div-Grad-Curl-All-That/dp/0393925161

oh wow its actually a book. nice

I'll look into that tomorrow, I gotta sleep rn though, lectures tomorrow. Sleep well Emilio

Far and away the best

Go for it

Once you're done with Schey

amazon.com/Vector-Tensor-Analysis-Applications-Mathematics/dp/…

Tensors for children, covariant derivatives for all

I can see an undergraduate student having the time to read 400 pages of material in their free time.

Throw two schaums vector/tensor books on top of those for good measure

@ACuriousMind So what's the deal? You got a job?

@DanielSank My superstitous side cautions me not to talk so much about it before I've signed anything, but I likely got a job as a software developer, yes.

@Phase Not quite, but I highly recommend picking it up at that price, yes

@Phase Yes, Pratchett is brilliant

@ACuriousMind Oh cool, well conditional congratulations then.

@ACuriousMind I see. And what software will you develop?

Hello @DeusIIXII

Hey

welcome :-)

Well i wanted to know. Can the laws of quantum physic apply to all matter and not just photons and stuff but this matter CHOOSE to behave in a predictable way that we all understand and can make formulas to predict how it will behave?

First of all, as far as science is concerned, nothing chooses to behave quantum-mechanically.

The world just works that way.

Second of all, sure, it's possible that the natural world is all choosing to behave in some way that makes it easy for us to describe, but that it could choose to behave differently some day. However, if that's the case, it's useless to discuss it until we actually see that happen.

Thanks for the answer

There's absolutely nothing you can gain (scientifically) by talking about behavior that might exist unless it's behavior we can at least imagine looking for with an experiment.

I guess i need to understand quantum physic more and maybe one-day create an experiment for it. That would be interesting

@DanielSank "Core technology" for SAP, may involve stuff like working on the compiler for their language, building database interfaces, security testing - mostly low-level stuff that their actual products then build on.

@DeusIIXII Right, like... even more simply, we could imagine that quantum mechanics doesn't work at some level, and we can propose all kinds of alternative theories. Those proposals are only truly useful if they either give us an idea for an experiment or give us a better way to describe the experiments we've already done.

@ACuriousMind Good for you. Will you take it if they give you an offer?

@DanielSank Yes, definitely

what about physics?

@ACuriousMind I see. Didn't realize you were into coding.

Cool!

@skullpatrol What about it? I realized I like physics but don't want to make a living out of it, and that long-form research doesn't play exactly to my strengths.

@ACuriousMind, Did I mention that @BernardoMeurer and I (and others) are working on a cellular automaton?

It's really neat.

Also @heather

It's the shit

I think I've lost track of the numerous projects you two are doing ;)

What? We barely do any projects together!

^

Hm, I recall that chat server or what it was, something about audio equipment...

@ACuriousMind The only other one we ever actually did any work on was our blog about audio equipment... which I really want to go back to!

@ACuriousMind Oh, yeah the chat server thingy is fun. It's just a way to dip my feet into new programming languages: i.e. implement the protocol in each new language.

@DanielSank Can't you do it in mathematica?

@unsym Probably, but I don't particularly care to learn how ;-)

ya, I guess it should probably be just two lines