His waist was almost as high as mine, but his head was a good six inches lower.

His spine was slowly collapsing.

That must've been like 30 years ago?

poor guy

@JakeRose Lived 5 years too short to here about Pluto's demotion :(

Apparently stephen hawking roams around here but ive only ever seen him once

Though his ashes were put on New Horizons

@SirCumference Mid nineties.

Cambridge

@SirCumference Like I said, I think the community held off bringing it up until after he was gone.

Whilst im at uni anyway

I live up north out of term time

Will do next year

First year you do a rather broad course

So I currently do physics, chem, maths, and earth sciences

Yeah its a weird one

I knew I wanted to do physics so Im not quite sure why I came here

@dmckee Huh, didn't know that

I got taught by simon conway morris if any of you are interested in paleobiology

Hes a really cool guy

Though he was around at the time the Kuiper belt was discovered. I wonder if he had any opinions on Pluto being a part of it.

@JakeRose Interested? sure. Know anything about it? Not to speak of.

@JakeRose Yeah, I bumped (almost literally) into him several times - the most recent of which was actually at breakfast while on holiday

Hes a pretty big name in the business. The cambrian explosion came a lot from him

(I also met Tim Gowers on more than one occasion)

Came to every one of our practicals to act as a demonstrator

Lovely guy

Paleo is the only thing I find interesting about earths tbh

@SirCumference It's actually a bit more complicated than that - while Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld, the Greeks had two different deities - Pluton and Plutos - that name likely derived from. Pluton ("the rich one", referring to gold and other metals coming from "below") was a euphemistic name they had given Hades because they feared him, while Plutos was simply the god of treasure

Mostly a boring and tedious subject because of the essays

Looking at rocks is pretty cool though actually

@ACuriousMind Huh

Simon was a geezer the way he did his lectures

more hitchikers references than I can count

But yeah cambridge is pretty good

I find it really hard though ngl

magdalene my friend

(and it'll only get worse)

There is also a notable distinction in that Hades is usually only used to refer to the god of the underworld in passing or as a dark force related to death, while Pluton is his name when mentioned favourably (such as being a good husband to Persephone, which Hades abducted). Greek mythology is interestingly confusing ;)

You a cantebridigian?

@JakeRose Still have Rowan Williams as Master?

Yeah we do

@JakeRose What year are you?

Amazing speeches but honestly the hardest man to have a conversation with

1st

@Mithrandir24601 you're not a magdalene are you?

Met him once as well :) He does have an incredible voice

@JakeRose Na - I'm at Bristol - I did my undergrad in Caius :)

AHhh a good place

I've only been their once

Did you have val gibson?

*there

@JakeRose I did... I wasn't exactly the greatest fan...

Bruh

(and both Bristol and Caius are amazing :D)

I essentially flunked all of last term

I found it so hard with her as a lecturer

Don't worry - I failed astro. fluids in third year

Sad because I want to do physics but I just couldnt cope last term

@JakeRose Is that Classical Mech?

Currently on special relativity

And its everything I did at a level near enough

Yeah man @SirCumference

You a cantebridgian too?

I dont get why they still let her lecture when its widely known she sucks

@JakeRose Nah I know a lot of Cambridge grad students here

Ahh cool

@JakeRose It was so bad for my class that we used guides like this

Apparently physics is a dwindling choice here

@JakeRose I wish I knew :/

Ahahah thats so relatable

Did you have the gloved one for rotational and s.relativity?

Im guessing you did compsci, physics maths 2nd year?

Can I ask

How did you revise physics?

Like theres no solutions avaialble to even remotely know

And if you cant figure something out you're just fucked

@JakeRose That's...kinda how exams work generally, isn't it? :P

I mean when revising

As in practice problems

@JakeRose I actually started off in CompSci for Part 1A (i.e. 2 CompSci modules, 1 physics, 1 maths), then moved into NatSci (both physics and the maths module) for part 1B

Ah cool

I want to do the same modules next year

Ive heard IB stat mec is essentially a course on hamiltonians

@JakeRose Nope. Absolutely nothing. We (the physicists in Caius) worked together through the exams, which helped a lot - none of us really did that well in exams until 4th year when we all magically did really well :) (although I was doing an MSc in Nottingham at that point)

@JakeRose I actually can't remember who taught us that stuff :P Mike Hobson did GR in third year though and he was absolutely fantastic

You were doing a masters in two different places??

Its so frustrating not to have any resources

@JakeRose I did my BA, then left to do a Masters in Mathematical Physics at Nottingham

Fair fair

I dont know If id stay for a masters here

Id probably consider somewhere else at that point

It's frustrating, but good prep for when you do a PhD and actually don't have any solutions

Maybe closer to home for a year

Yeah I see your point

(and presumably later on in life when the same applies)

What did you do for part III?

@JakeRose I didn't :P

I don't think I ever did example problems with solutions.

@Blue Most people did their masters with their bachelors

(i.e. an MSci)

@Blue It's common in most of Europe

Shit I get confused with the nomncalture of the years

part II even

Oh yeah? @ACuriousMind

@Blue I never did any problems beyond the ones assigned to me during the course, and never read any either.

We sometimes get the final answer depending on who the lecturer is

We had to do a problem set every week here, and I always found myself well-prepared if I had done all of them diligently

We get set stuff by each of our supervisors

4pieces of work a week usually

@Mithrandir24601 Having gone to other unis how would you compare the workload?

@JakeRose Fair :P I did a research review in Superconducting Quantum Computers, TP1 (also went to TP2 lectures, but didn't take the exam - this was worth doing), Computational project, astro fluids (which I failed, as I was utterly rubbish at it), Particle and Nuclear Physics and Quantum Condensed Matter (I think those were the optional ones?)

Damn 3rd year sounds cool as shit

@JakeRose Nottingham was a breeze. The PhD (in Bristol) is definitely less stressful and certainly no more difficult than Cambridge undergrad

@Blue Does "star secretions" sound better? ;P

Sounds like a news title for the daily mail

@Blue None of it made any sense to me, despite everyone else finding it the easiest subject :P

Me with igneous petrology

Did you have sat lectures in 2nd and 3rd year?

to be fair, when I went to Nottingham, I felt like I'd already done half the course in third year :) which makes life easier

I feel like we havent done that much physics up to now

@JakeRose nope :) They just do that to the first years. Probably to instil that Saturdays are no longer days off or something(?)

But like with the added other courses its a bit overwhelming

Thank

God

I couldnt take having saturday lectures next year

My college parents both have it now

They changed the ordering of some of the lecture courses (physics is on saturdays in 1st year now) so its possible they changed the other things

Don't worry! You're still going to be working every Saturday without fail! You'll only get to enjoy that luxury for a few more years

@JakeRose Ahh, possibly - we only had maths on Saturday (if I'm remembering correctly...)

Ive been slacking this term although ive in generl found it way easier than last term

*in general

I have a supervision on saturday which kills me off nd forces me to nap the day away

Got any tips for surviving here?

@Mithrandir24601 The best thing about a regular job outside academia is that one's weekends are absolutely free :P

@JakeRose Umm... Take breaks, don't work too hard and enjoy yourself!

@ACuriousMind Well, perhaps :P

@DavidZ Well, at least mine are :P

hehe

@ACuriousMind I don't exactly do a huge amount of work at the weekends at the minute...

Is it hard to be happy in academia?

Depends on what you need to be happy, really

It seems a lot of people are stressed, annoyed at the politics of it, and just unhappy

I always have the option of keeping weekends free but I haven't always exercised that option. But I meant, more broadly than our specific jobs, there are plenty of workplaces where you're expected to be "on duty" over the weekend. (So I hear, anyway)

@DavidZ Well, these jobs exist but they are definitely the minority in my perception

@DavidZ Did you learn programming post uni? Or during?

Does anybody know somewhere that would take a first year on a summer research placement?

Or know any good ideas for a research placement I could do at this level?

@JakeRose Before, actually. By the time I started university I'd already had a few years of experience programming. But I learned a lot more in university classes.

We only do matlab here

^ Ick.

@ACuriousMind that could be true

@JakeRose As a first year PhD student, I've learnt from my mistakes in undergrad (see above about not working too hard - essentially, it's impossible to keep working flat out ridiculous hours per day, every day of the week for several years) and am really enjoying things so far :)

Nobody in the physics department wants to create a new python or c++ course

To be fair, learning Python or C++ on your own is a lot more realistic than learning physics on your own

If you want programming, the Compsci department are rather good at it

Building a course is a huge amount of work. Even adapting a course is a huge amount of work.

not that having a course wouldn't be useful

Oh yeah I agree its just slightly annoying that they wont do it

Because it is by far a better choice

(doing C++ is mandatory in third year, but doing it properly before that was really useful)

Recommend devoting a summer to it after 2nd year?

After learning my first programming language, I've always found courses/lectures on other languages much too slow-moving to be useful.

@ACuriousMind yeah, I've found the same

@Mithrandir24601 Heh, I took a class on numerical simulations where they just started the first lecture with "Y'all know C, right?". Attendance of the second lecture was 10% of the first. :P

@ACuriousMind Sounds like a good start :D

Our matlab practicals are the most tedious and poorly taught thing ever

They just give you a buch of things to essentially copy out

The lecture was actually really good, but only if you had enough programming experience

And then submit

@Blue that's true. I actually find that the standard algorithms that they cover in a CS course don't necessarily match the most useful algorithms in other fields. E.g. a lot of physics deals with numerical algorithms but CS courses don't usually spend much time on those.

@Mithrandir24601 How many people kept on for second year?

And ive heard theres essays???

@ACuriousMind Exactly why it sounds like a good start ;)

@JakeRose Matlab... No... NO... ::screams and runs out of the room::

@Mithrandir24601 The faces of all the theorists suddenly realizing they stepped into a lecture on the gritty details of simulations were priceless :D (Not that I wasn't a theorist, but I had actually read the description more carefully than most of the others, it seemed :P )

@Mithrandir24601 They revamped the course for this year but I heard for you guys it was a walk along the styx

@JakeRose about 200, I think, then 120 in third year and 80 in fourth (my memory might be a bit off, but those sound like familiar numbers)

Not bad numbers

Very different to other unis though

@ACuriousMind aw man I wish I'd been in that class

@ACuriousMind The simulation stuff was the only thing I was ever able to get really good marks on in undergrad physics :)

So, I really wish I was there too :P

This was the only class on proper numerical computations in physics I ever saw offered here and in retrospect I think I'd have liked more of it

↑ some folks just have too much time on their hands

::squints:: That's not what I would call a "hole in a hole in a hole".

I mean, I don't think it's a very good description of the figure. It sure draws clicks, though :P

@ACuriousMind well, the description is due to Spivak

I don't think you can really fault Spivak for the clickbaitability of his figure captions

I do wonder what would happen if you change the multiple-tubes malarkey for a single tube with a knot

'Written in 1897, its scope was as broad as it could possibly be, namely to cover the whole of algebraic geometry, and associated theories. The subject is discussed by Baker in terms of transcendental functions, and in particular theta functions. In our century it has been enriched by the methods and ideas of topology, commutative algebra and Grothendieck's schemes seemed to have replaced once and forever the somewhat naive language of classical algebraic geometry.'

amazon.com/Abelian-Functions-Theorem-Cambridge-Mathematical/dp/…

Maybe this is that 1 AG book you can trust