The h Bar

02:43

@TobiasFünke you missed the conversation history. There's always a reason when ACM decides to proceed with clarification when you know that he knows the definitions of stuff.

@HerrFeinmann s/Chinese/Mandarin. Canto has 9 tones. At least 6. It is a mess

Silly Goose

04:15

@ACuriousMind lol there’s a lot of me on this page

Silly Goose

04:44

when you guys were in undergraduate or masters or PhD (or if you still are), did you find that your peers were actually not that interested in physics?

qwerty

04:57

I think people go into physics for a wider variety of reasons, with different personalities / outlooks and motives than you might expect.

I certainly felt that I many people, not only my peers, weren't interested in the fundamentals or the kind of understanding that I was. and even if they had interest, they might have been picky with who they wanted to discuss research with.

the extent to which I felt this way varied with the cohort, the group and the university. I will say that hbar seems to skew to a certain kind of interest and people which I appreciate

Relativisticcucumber

@qwerty yeah but i think the strange thing is when ppl wont accept american as a heritage. i mean i dont get why that cant be my heritage but people say it can only be a nationality. its weird bc i understand there are people e.g. @SillyGoose who are american citizens and korean heritage, so it makes sense to have that concept, but where it gets weird for me is trying to force someone to have a distinction when there isn't one. in my case nobody in my family even knows where we came from xD

im sure i can do some kind of ancestry mapping but its like why cant i just be american and thats it xD i feel like people are trying to force me to have some other aspect of identity that i just dont feel like i have lol

@qwerty i have started to notice "even if they had interest, they might have been picky with who they wanted to discuss research with" as well and i find this phenomena very interesting

@Allie LOL

@ACuriousMind you are father and bestie what's next

qwerty

@Relativisticcucumber iiiinteresting cos you are also female and I honestly started to wonder at some places if this had anything to do with it :( it wasn't like that at one uni I was at but it very much was at the next

Relativisticcucumber

@qwerty wait im not female

qwerty

omg I'm so sorry

I must have gotten confused, what are your pronouns?

Relativisticcucumber

well i actually intend for my gender to be unknown

qwerty

05:08

ah okay

Relativisticcucumber

B)

qwerty

is it ok to use they/them to refer to you or should I just use your handle?

Relativisticcucumber

05:30

@Arjun also hard irl

@qwerty yes either works great thanks

i also respond to "the cucumber"

Silly Goose

05:51

@Relativisticcucumber out of context moment

qwerty

06:11

@Relativisticcucumber yeah it can be tricky/touchy for a number of reasons on a few sides. I can answer my perspective for Australia I guess and see if translates a bit to USA/Canada/NZ. Australia is a very young nation, and settled by Europeans much later than America. so at least in my circles (which granted, is urban), it is very much uncommon to not have some idea of your heritage outside Australia and have that influence you in some way even if distant.

for instance, people I know with Irish grandparents were raised "culturally Catholic" and so on. I actually can't remember a single person who told me their heritage is "Australian". someone telling me that without further context (rather than just saying "I don't know") could be seen as a political statement of being more "authentically" that nationality/culture, if they were not saying they were indigenous. in the USA, I can only imagine it's even more nuanced and sensitive.

Ryder Rude

06:32

hi

@MoreAnonymous hi. the acceleration operators is $-[[x,H],H]$. this is equal to $-\frac{V'(x)}{m}$

in the second quantised formalism, i think it should be $A=\int dx -\frac{V'(x)}{m} \psi ^{\dagger} (x)\psi (x)$. this is in the non relativistic theory. position is not an observable in relativistic QFT

@MoreAnonymous in the Heisenberg picture the equations of an accelerated frame should be the same as the equations of the the uniform gravity frame

Relativisticcucumber

@SillyGoose sprung like a HO

Ryder Rude

also see this link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13194-010-0009-z

naturallyInconsistent

07:16

@SillyGoose yes; why? A lot of my peers clearly were getting their degrees so that they can later go into finance or patent law

Ryder Rude

08:20

please consider upvoting this. it is a high effort question at -1 votes

naturallyInconsistent

It is your own question, that had already been downvoted. How can you judge that it is a high effort question yourself?

Ryder Rude

i can judge because it is my own question. the -1 was undeserved

qwerty

@RyderRude it's showing 0 for me now

Ryder Rude

@qwerty it was upvoted just now

qwerty

awesome. I'm afraid I don't vote on stuff I don't feel I have expertise on

Ryder Rude

08:30

it is okay. it does not have negative votes now

qwerty

08:40

i continue to find what you all do on stack exchange really impressive. in some ways more impressive than research

Herr Feinmann

@naturallyInconsistent I can't even pronounce Italian properly :P

@SillyGoose For a long time yes, then I realized that even if for some of them it was true, it was also me being a self-validating ass, probably. Also, given that obsession caused almost total disinterest in the long run, I would say that there were no winners all along

@RyderRude I don't think you can spam a question to ask for upvotes. Upvotes should be natural

qwerty

@HerrFeinmann what do you mean by self-validating ass?

Ryder Rude

@HerrFeinmann i asked to consider upvoting. it should be natural.

nickbros123

09:16

In my 1st and 2nd year of studies, I noticed not many were _seriously_ interested. They entered college at a pop-sci brian greene consumer level of fascination, and stayed at that level. I (and a few others) used to worship gthooft's webpage and decided we will religiously follow that, and grind till we die, cuz we knew (or rather, we naively thought) thats what it takes to have a sliver of chance of amounting to something.

But as mr.feynmann pointed out, it could be possible that one might lose interest due to this obsession, long term. (I, too, lessened my interest in physics and switch…

Herr Feinmann

09:29

@qwerty Mhhh, I meant that probably if you (generic you) think all the other people are not as interested as you, it makes you feel as if you're the only one or one of the few putting the right amount of effort, I guess?

@Relativisticcucumber Well, at least I've finally learned that you are not Chinese. This is the next step, hold on. I will get there :P

qwerty

@HerrFeinmann I see what you mean. I suppose that is indeed a trap. But I think it's not necessary to go to that judgement. actually for me it was almost the opposite in undergrad - that other people had to expend less effort and care less to breeze through exams. phd was a different story.

I guess I think it's valid to make the observation what you yourself seem to feel more strongly about something than other people... and in my case, feel isolated by it either way.

Arjun

09:46

@SillyGoose I noticed one thing a lot of people in the first year of undergrad who told me they were into theoretical physics lost it after they took griffiths level electromagnetism in the second semester and have taken a different major,A significant chunk of the ones who still kept their interest started hating theoretical physics after they took goldstein level classical mechanics last semester,most have migrated towards computational Astrophysics and Experimental physics as of now.

I think it is good that they have realized their interests this early in their studies

nickbros123

@Arjun Some have migrated to maths too

Arjun

@SillyGoose I feel a lot of high schoolers have a very wrong idea of what physics is like and reality won't hit them till like the third year of their undergrad education

@nickbros123 Yupp,the wise ones :'(

nickbros123

@Arjun lol

Ryder Rude

did anyone migrate to philosophy?

nickbros123

@RyderRude me in 30-40 years

Arjun

09:58

@RyderRude The physics ones after they took qft-1 xD

nickbros123

or maybe 50 yrs

Ryder Rude

lol

nickbros123

@Arjun they migrated to condensd matter xD

or was it qft 2

Arjun

@nickbros123 lol,they still had the dawg left in them

nickbros123

i have to ask some qft 2 students whether the dawg is still in them

Arjun

10:16

ye that wud be an interesting exercise

Tobias Fünke

12:57

hello everyone

Herr Feinmann

@qwerty It is understood that my analysis is really about what I think of myself :P

qwerty

@HerrFeinmann youre too harsh on yourself in that case xD

Herr Feinmann

You'd be surprised to know how much I am :P

qwerty

not at all. I get the feeling that many hbar regulars care deeply about physics and hold themselves to high standards

Silly Goose

thanks for everyone's answer

Tobias Fünke

13:13

I think there is a "problem". If you want to study within the usual time (3years Bachelor, 2 years Master in Germany, for example), most people do not have enough time to think, discuss, re-examine many things. Put differently, if you want to spend more time thinking and caring about what you learn, then most likely it also takes you longer to study (and this is not only so in physics)...

and depending on the financial situation and the own priorities, it might be doable/feasible or not

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent well, during my undergraduate I felt the way I asked about. But that was easily explainable (my undergrad has like 2 physics graduates a year; not exactly known for physics or anything science related...). then, I thought a PhD program would be different. surely at least some people would be quite interested in physics and want to talk about it. but so far that is not the case... :P

Tobias Fünke

so I'd say that it is not always "no interest" or so...

and perhaps some of your folks/colleagues are active here too, without you knowing :P

Silly Goose

I was not expecting everyone to be such a way, but even just a few.

naturallyInconsistent

there are also a lot of people who love physics, but really just want to rest and relax after a long day at work

Tobias Fünke

sure

Silly Goose

13:27

i am trying to halt my slow decline into this academic pessimism :P

qwerty

@SillyGoose for me it felt that people in my phd program seemed less interested to talk about physics than in undergraduate. i couldn't say why.

someone with an applied maths background made my day at work when they asked me about GR this week :) i tried explaining metrics...

naturallyInconsistent

13:44

yay

Herr Feinmann

14:14

@qwerty In my case, it's the opposite. The more you advance, the more people can go on talking about physics. During my undegrad I was criticized because I talked about it too much (in the department, of course), which is why at this point I only bother talking of physics to someone who's obsessed or something :P

Ryder Rude

15:13

people get bored when I talk physics

or math

or philosophy

people need to take knowledge more seriously

ACuriousMind

No trace of irony or self-reflection, impressive.

@SillyGoose How are you trying to talk to them about it? I've experienced it several times that people who really liked talking about their fields of study had a history of other people dismissing them and so they had become reluctant to start conversations about it

Herr Feinmann

I don't know which of us you roasted (if not both) but it was funny nonetheless :P

ACuriousMind

but on the other hand, yes, there is a surprising number of people who don't really seem to have any passion for their fields - many of my colleagues hold PhDs in STEM fields and I'm always baffled when I talk about math or physics and they go "ah, I've forgotten most of it" and I'm like what do you mean you just forgot what you did with a decade of your life

Herr Feinmann

Yeah, of course that's what I'm talking about. I would only add one thing to your message, forgetting (details) is ok and natural, so long as you mean that you don't rely much of memory, but very often these people almost brag about it :P

Like those who brag about passing a test with a high score and minimal study because they were lucky

Ryder Rude

15:40

right

lack of understanding of nature isn't something one should brag about

on the other hand, there are people who haven't studied math and still want to understand nature at a non-math level

these people have my respect

Silly Goose

17:28

@ACuriousMind One person I asked them directly what their research was about but they said maybe another time XD

I think it might be reasonable, though. maybe there would be too much to explain to get to what their research was about :P

@ACuriousMind I think it is also that just generally many conversations here that I hear are not related to physics or math (unless it is related to homework).

I think another contributor is that my interests seem quite disjoint from the general research going on in the department.

ACuriousMind

@SillyGoose I mean it's allowed to have other interests than just your study/work, right? :P

Silly Goose

@ACuriousMind I agree with that, but you would think one would hear at least a conversation about physics (unrelated to homework or exams).

Arjun

@SillyGoose This is by far the only place that I've encountered where such discussions happen at a reasonable frequency

Silly Goose

Here, with my undergrad advisor, and with the cucumber are the three places where I have found a very nice space to discuss and imagine about physics :P.

Herr Feinmann

Do you ever image the hBar as an actual bar?

One of those bars where the counter and everything else is dark wood

Arjun

17:35

Which bar you mean the one on which you hang on or the one where u hang out? @HerrFeinmann

@HerrFeinmann I just Imagine a room with the uncertainty principle written on the door :p

Herr Feinmann

@Arjun hRod

Silly Goose

@HerrFeinmann the "physics lounge" at a university I visited for a summer was called "hbar"

There were no alcoholic beverages served :P

Herr Feinmann

You should claim our space

The cocktails would not be alcoholic: quantum interpretations, spinors and clifford algebras, representations, Lie theory, diffeomorphism invariance...

ACuriousMind

@SillyGoose it's a somewhat common pun for those spaces

Arjun

Lmao,Now I have a business idea,I'll prolly start a bar after graduation in a nice location and call it the "hbar"

Silly Goose

17:41

@Arjun Well I am not claiming a general rule for the reasonability of frequency of certain types of discussions. I think I just had an expectation for a physics PhD program to naturally produce an environment in which such discussions happened frequently.

Arjun

@SillyGoose Oh! I thought you said you don't see a lot of physics discussions happen here in the hbar and my reply was about that,my bad.

@SillyGoose when you said "here" I thought literally here in the hbar lol

Silly Goose

oh i see how that can be confusing XD

i think hbar is quite neat

Arjun

@SillyGoose Well if what you said is the norm..It's kinda sad..because that's how I thought graduate school would be like, a bigger version of hbar lol, cuz you expect bottlenecking due to 5 years of BS+MS

Silly Goose

to be fair I only have had a fairly short experience (so far) with a single physics graduate program. my undergraduate consortium does not have graduate school(s).

but indeed you'd think with how competitive it is (at least in the states) to get into a PhD program, that one would at least be able to tell why someone in the program is doing the PhD, whether it is to become an academic or otherwise.

but that is the game~

Arjun

@SillyGoose Oh so you didn't have phd TA's trying to spoon feed the undergrad you xD

Silly Goose

17:51

nop

Arjun

@SillyGoose I'm genuinely clueless(likely due to my own lack of knowledge) as to why someone would enroll for a physics phd unless they really wanna do it..financially also there are better things to do if one of their leading reasons to get into the program was a better chance at the job market

Or maybe they still had some passion left after their undergrad..but it quickly dried out in a couple of years due to various reasons

Herr Feinmann

19:19

In the analytical index one often reads a letter "f" or two after the page number, what is it?

ACuriousMind

@HerrFeinmann f = and following page, ff = and following pages

Herr Feinmann

Okay, thanks. I've finally found something for the first time. I used to look "analytical index" up but it wasn't the way to go :P

For example, 25ff means 25-26-27, correct?

ACuriousMind

no, it means at least that, but it could be any number of pages after that

Herr Feinmann

Oh, ok. It's not an "f" for every page. One "f" for one page, two for 2+

Okie dokie

Relativisticcucumber

20:32

@SillyGoose well you also forgot to add some context. so not only do people in our program not talk about physics, 2 people in particular are actually bashing people for "liking physics too much" and it has started to cause some drama. i think it is just absurd to have this happen at the phd level. this is what middle school was like. :P but i think that bashing is just how people deal with their own insecurity so i think we should not focus on it too much and just live our lives :P

qwerty

20:47

@Relativisticcucumber D: hugs to both of you

@ACuriousMind I think people say that when they just want to disengage too for whatever reasons. maybe they had negative experiences for instance, or maybe they don't want to say anything incorrect in front of you. for post phd and not during, I'm less surprised by that

ACuriousMind

@qwerty yes, it's a deflection for sure, I'm still surprised how often it happens

qwerty

21:09

for many people it's a past life I guess (I hear many ex academics using that description) and I don't find it shocking to want to just want to shut it off. I personally couldn't, but I can empathise.

the other thing is that you are incredibly knowledgeable, and maybe colleagues just don't want to say the wrong thing in front of you :)

Tobias Fünke

21:38

good evening

Herr Feinmann

Hello, Tobias

Tobias Fünke

oO Your name now shows only "Herr" here in the chat haha

Herr Feinmann

Maybe a bug or something?

Tobias Fünke

idk

how are you doing?

Herr Feinmann

I'm slowly learning the second subharmonic :D

You?

And I'm also making a list of lists I want to do

Tobias Fünke

21:43

@HerrFeinmann aah I have a lot of those haha

@HerrFeinmann not so good, actually. I am feeling sick. I just came home from the institute's Christmas dinner

Herr Feinmann

@TobiasFünke if you talked too much about CM that's the reason. That stuff is bad for your health :P

Tobias Fünke

@Relativisticcucumber yes

@HerrFeinmann haha, believe me, I am not the worst there :p

Herr Feinmann

Hope you get well soon, anyways

Tobias Fünke

but apart from that, I was finally able to answer a question again, so that I did at least one productive thing today lol

thanks

Herr Feinmann

How satisfying. Do you have a black notebook to write that down?

I'm a black notebook guy

Tobias Fünke

21:47

today at work I had to solve an integral...did too many stupid mistakes so I had to leave it for tomorrow :/ I have an idea and I hope it works out

@HerrFeinmann no, I mean here on SE haha

but well, yes, I have a notebook ;)

I am "oldschool". Most of my colleagues use iPads or so

Herr Feinmann

@TobiasFünke Ipads are useful to browse through books and stuff like that. A pocket-sized notebook is useful for many things: write down ideas, enemies, references

I have many. I'm using one to write what I study during these few months, with all the references. It got out of hand. It's even color-coded.

It's the perfect tool for me, since I can use it to write down all the petty questions I have, i.e. 99% of the things I ask :P

Tobias Fünke

@HerrFeinmann :d y

yes I agree

Do you (@everyone) have a favorite paper? :) Anything "easy"/clear yet insightful, for example.

I really like Jaynes' "Information theory and statistical mechanics" (1957) or Hohenberg and Kohn "Inhomogeneous electron gas" (1964)

the latter is an extremely influential paper in many-body/solid state/condensed matter physics/quantum chemistry. The proof of the theorem, however, is almost trivial

qwerty

22:16

@TobiasFünke i feel like for papers above a certain threshold of good, how much I like it is just how familiar I've become with it

Tobias Fünke

@qwerty hmhm I see and I agree

qwerty

I guess it's too easily biased to say anything is a favourite, for me

Tobias Fünke

but for example, the two papers I mentioned can be understood by anyone (with a bit of QM knowledge for the latter, and a bit of stat. mech. for the former)

@qwerty yeah, of course. But go ahead if you want :p

qwerty

I'll give them a read after work! :D

thanks for linking

antimony

22:37

@TobiasFünke i'm just an ignorant EE grad student slowly learning to love photonics. But as I don't currently have much of a useful QM education, it's actually just EM optics at this stage really

Tobias Fünke

okay

antimony

wishing i'd done a double degree phys/eng but realising it's probably too late for that now

Tobias Fünke

where are you from, if I may ask?

antimony

australia

how about you?

Tobias Fünke

I actually regret not studying a different subject after my Master's in physics

antimony

22:39

really?

Tobias Fünke

I am from Germany (where I also currently live)

yeah

antimony

nice! German science discipline seems world class afaict.

i was spending about half my time in the physics department, but lately too much ee project work is taking up my time

still holding aspirations to get further into device physics etc

Tobias Fünke

nice. good luck with that and your further studies!

antimony

thanks you too

Tobias Fünke

I'll go to sleep now. See you around

antimony

22:43

nights mate

qwerty

@TobiasFünke what would you have wanted to study?

Tobias Fünke

@qwerty (human) medicine or psychology, or perhaps philosophy or history. :d

but back then it was the more the first two

Herr Feinmann

I wish I had studied music :P

Or law, probably law would be better for me

ACuriousMind

@HerrFeinmann what, are you getting busted by the cops that often?

Herr Feinmann

Apparently they don't like public display of disapproval against QFT

I mean, most of the people working with legal stuff have kickass ties and cases and always work in a suit. Who wouldn't want that? :P

Feb 23 at 17:21, by naturallyInconsistent

No, nerds come with all kinds of kinks

ACuriousMind

22:56

@HerrFeinmann ah, right, we've been over that

qwerty

@HerrFeinmann you know you can wear that stuff in most desk jobs :p

Herr Feinmann

@qwerty well apparently everywhere except a physics department :P

naturallyInconsistent

@antimony Half of QM is built on EM (the other half on stat therm), so, you are actually closer than you think

qwerty

@HerrFeinmann do the equations fall out of your head when you put on a suit? xD

Silly Goose

all of QM is built on linear algebra and Lie theory (and functional analysis that I choose to ignore hehe) ;)

naturallyInconsistent

23:08

@HerrFeinmann you can always pretend to be giving a presentation everyday and thus wear a suit and tie in the physics department if you really really want, you know?

you dont even have to give a reason...

Silly Goose

i made the horrible choice to save my figures as "fig1", "fig2", etc. and their named numbers do not match up with their Overleaf given number labels...

ACuriousMind

@HerrFeinmann I have a friend who wore a suit everyday when we were students

qwerty

@ACuriousMind a dapper individual.

ACuriousMind

you can do it, you just have to live with everyone making fun of you for it :P

Silly Goose

i like the winter for making it reasonable to wear the coat with turtle neck and pants style :P

qwerty

23:13

I saw some memes about Germans having an extremely casual sartorial sense and that if you put on nice clothes people say things like "wow, is it your birthday?'

ACuriousMind

@qwerty "Who died?" or "Who's getting married?" would be more common since many people only ever wear a suit to funerals and weddings

qwerty

@ACuriousMind yes! one of the comments on this YouTube short youtube.com/shorts/NcPQGFmZsm8?si=WhLlKhIEeC9THEAT

Herr Feinmann

@qwerty no, but I have a tie to flex

@naturallyInconsistent The department is small, they know me :P

@ACuriousMind I usually wear a full suit only for my graduation or a close friend's. In other cases, I use less formal combinations including tie

V shaped sweater+tie is my favorite :P

@ACuriousMind "are you graduating?"

But now I'm also starting to get the opposite effect. If I dress casually, like a hoodie, I get "what happened to your shirts?". Now that I mention it I had my friend's father and his (my) thesis advisor joke about it once 💀

Silly Goose

23:38

there is a recent (2024) review on fractional statistics by Greitner and Wilczek ~

does anyone have a favorite k-theory resource

also lol

qwerty

@SillyGoose I don't get the joke D:

Silly Goose

Miami is a city most notably in the state Florida. Oxford is a city in (many places) but most notably England. And Ohio is another state. It is funny that so many distinct, well-known names of places are combined into a single new place :P

qwerty

oh! I thought we were suppose to recognise it xD

naturallyInconsistent

@HerrFeinmann then they already know you have a kink for that...

@HerrFeinmann see

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