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user54412
12:32 AM
@0celo7 Says someone who takes AP classes. I'd venture to say most high schools in America don't offer that. Mine certainly didn't, and I was in a generic suburban school.
 
@ChrisWhite How did you get into Caltech?
 
user54412
yesterday, by John Rennie
Sex, drugs and rock and roll of course
 
user54412
In truth, it was 80% luck (short of younger siblings of students, who were openly given some sort of preference, there's no one on earth who has good odds of getting in to the school).
 
user54412
The rest was some combination of initiative (I didn't say I didn't take AP tests) and looking good compared to my surroundings.
 
user54412
I'm reasonably sure that had I gone to the very good county magnet school I wouldn't have ended up at a good college.
 
user54412
12:45 AM
@0celo7 This is a real issue that few people recognize.
 
user54412
If I had had siblings, my parents wouldn't have been able to afford to send me to private college, and the government wouldn't have given any aid whatsoever.
 
@ChrisWhite Yeah, FAFSA takes one input: income, which is hardly a good measure of wealth.
 
user54412
Meanwhile, I knew plenty of people in college who lived in what can only be described as mansions on vast estates and yet who got full federally-funded rides to college.
 
@ChrisWhite How does that happen?
Surely not Pell grants.
 
user54412
Differences in price levels? Differences in what counts as "income"? I don't really know.
 
user54412
12:49 AM
Tangentially, I was one of the few kids in my HS whose family didn't own a second home. Turns out that plumbers and electricians and such (the majority of the other families in town) can afford quite a few luxuries when they insist on being paid in cash so as to not pay income taxes.
 
There are some pretty wealthy people at my school (there's an Audi and quite a few Camaros and Mustangs in the student lots), but I hear the southern Maryland schools are ridiculous (children of lobbyists, congressmen, beltway lawyers).
 
1:12 AM
@Danu "I have memorized many equations, even know general relativity, i know how to derive the particle in a box scenario. " hehehe
 
@NeuroFuzzy Is he god?
 
Surely!
 
@NeuroFuzzy I doubt he has even opened a physics book before.
By reading his answers.
@NeuroFuzzy Read this...
don't underestimate me
 
I've had enough of reading that!
 
@NeuroFuzzy Too bad there are tons of them.
 
1:27 AM
Tons?
 
Yes the fermilab question page has about 100 different questions of that type.
 
Well then I'd better not go to the fermilab question page.
midterm tomorrow!
 
 
1 hour later…
2:34 AM
Does anyone else have a list of users that they would desperately like to say "Shut up, Wesley!" to?
 
2:45 AM
Eww Star Trek
@dmckee I do.
@dmckee Skilled troll or clueless kid?
 
I've known kids who were a less intense version of that personality, so I could be convinced of either.
 
"I have memorized many equations"
Good. All I have to do is stare at this string theory book and memorize all 800 pages of equations. Then I'll be an expert!
 
@0celo7 Yep. But students ask about equations and professors ask about concepts.
 
@dmckee The book I'm currently reading, Basic Concepts of String Theory, is actually 800 pages of calculations. The concepts are explained fairly well, but god damn these equations are hard to follow...
I shudder to think the length of the book if they actually laid out every calculation.
The authors don't seem to care about signs and overall factors either...quite sloppy in that regard.
 
@0celo7 I got badly hung up on basic field theory and have never gotten back to it. But a colleague from the math department here has been teaching some differential geometry lessons as a way to bone up on it, and I'm learning some math again. Maybe I'll have another go sometime.
In my copious spare time, of course.
 
2:58 AM
@dmckee Differential geometry for field theory? Seems like our definitions of "basic" are different.
You can get through the first two volumes of Weinberg without knowing a lick of geometry.
 
@0celo7 No, differential geometry because it touches on a lot of aspects of abstract algebra that I never mastered and I see people using for field theory.
 
@dmckee Ah, the geometrical theory of Lie groups, for instance?
 
I'm basically a wrench and soldering iron physicist trying to keep up with the smart people.
@0celo7 Yeah. That stuff and internalizing what is implied when someone starts talking about dual spaces and forms.
 
I know MTW uses some weird way to teach forms intuitively. It must have never taken off, I've never seen it in a geometry/GR book since.
@dmckee So you're more interested in lectures than books?
 
I am writing a set of notes tentatively entitled "Forgotten Grad School Physics", which is intended to be digestible in small portions if you knew the prerequisites at one time.
@0celo7 I'm happy with either, but in truth I've been teaching overloads and have a hard time scraping up a couple of hours a week, so it's slow going.
 
3:04 AM
@dmckee Is this for your blog or just personal consumption?
 
Personal for now, but getting it into a form for public consumption is a long term goal.
 
@dmckee Well I can recommend multiple 100s of pages of relevant material that have allowed me to understand people like @ACuriousMind, @Qmechanic, etc. (sometimes ;) ).
@dmckee Cool.
 
@0celo7 I'd love to have some links or titles, but they will probably languish for a while.
 
@dmckee Spacetime and Geometry by Carroll and Geometry, Topology and Physics by Nakahara both start pretty simple but ramp it up to advanced topics.
Nakahara especially so. The first 10 chapters are really detailed, but he goes encyclopedia mode for the last parts of the book.
Of course, the last parts are the ones that need the most explanation.
The second chapter is about maps of sets, vector spaces, topological spaces and homeomorphisms.
(Ch. 1 is a review of quantum mechanics.)
 
That sounds like just my speed.
I find that once I get the basic down right I can bootstrap my own understanding faster these days than when I was younger, but it takes longer to really get the basics.
 
3:15 AM
By "field theory" do you mean quantum or Einstein, i.e. GR?
(GR is cooler!)
I'm off for tonight, see ya.
 
3:52 AM
@dmckee Yes. And if there were some sort of record for most deleted posts by a user, this guy would own it by a large margin.
 
 
5 hours later…
8:48 AM
0
Q: Is the new profile style on SE coming to Physics SE?

innisfreeI've noticed that other stack exchange sites have a new style of user profile. The new style has a different layout, as well as more statistics, such as "people reached", which is interesting. Is the new style coming to physics? My profile pages on other stack exchange sites have the new templa...

 
 
3 hours later…
Ell
11:38 AM
Hi
 
12:11 PM
Salut
 
Ell
I have a question about capacitors
well, just an RC circuit
according to wikipedia, $C\frac{dV}{dt} + \frac{V}{R} = 0$
ah wait
I think I got it now :P
 
very well then
 
Ell
12:51 PM
actually I do have a question @yuggib
How would you think of finding voltage with current?
Ie if you set out to find v(t) , why would you start with I?
 
1:03 PM
@Ell because the resistance is constant?
 
Ell
Oh yeah
makes sense
 
 
2 hours later…
2:58 PM
@Ell This kind of think is why people recommend rubber duck debugging. Cool when it works, and even when it doesn't solve your problem it helps you to formulate it clearly for communicating with others.
 
Ell
3:57 PM
@dmckee Yeah, usually it solves my issue
I was just misreading a sign over and over >.<
 
 
3 hours later…
7:12 PM
Is there a way to see on how many days a user has hit the rep cap?
 
user54412
 
user54412
Looks like you're beating me 13 to 11 :) And of course John Rennie has 178
 
@ChrisWhite Thanks :)
 
8:08 PM
0
Q: What are the structures that exist at roughly the scale of the Planck length?

Lance PollardWhat are the mathematical/geometric structures that exist at the level of the Planck length?

Should this question be closed as e.g primarily opinion-based?
 
@Qmechanic I voted unclear what you're asking, it's not clear what "existence of mathematical structure at a length" even means, imo
 
8:55 PM
Hey guys
is there already a question on physics.SE asking roughly: "Why do we decompose linearized gravitational fields into representations of SO(3)?"
 
@Danu ...I didn't even know we do that ;)
 
@ACuriousMind You never heard of scalar, vector and tensor perturbations?
 
Nope
 
Pfft :P
 
I'm really not a GR guy ;)
 
8:58 PM
It's treated in our introductory course :P
Also, Mukhanov came up with the standard formalism so that may have something to do with it (he also teaches the GR course) haha
 
Do you know the answer to your question?
 
No, and I'd like to know it.
 
@Danu In the context of Post-Newtonian?
 
Ask Mukhanov ;)
 
@0celo7 In the context of gravitational waves.
 
9:01 PM
Well, I don't think that's standard for introductory. Yay LMU?
 
Like I said, I suspect Mukhanov has something to do with it
 
I can't find anything about scalar, etc. perturbations in my standard references.
 
Are there specialized monographs for gravitational waves?
 
Mukhanov's cosmology book does it.
It's a cosmology topic
also Carroll.
if Carroll is not your standard reference on GR, you're wrong :D
 
9:08 PM
I looked at his index!!
 
Section 7.2 lol
 
Yes I found it.
 
Although the discussion in Mukhanov's book is a LOT better
so actually I'd advise against using Carroll for this :P
 
I never much cared for gravitational waves.
Don't worry, I won't read it
It's lower than Quantum Theory for Mathematicians on my list
 
The more people undervalue GR, the better it'll reflect on me ;)
 
9:11 PM
I love GR, just not gravitational waves
 
Embrace the calculations :P
How will you prove stability of Schwarzschild under perturbations?! ;)
 
Does Carroll do that?
 
No
That is not an introductory topic :P
 
I'm surprised Straumann doesn't cover waves as extensively as Carroll.
@Danu I recall Straumann saying it was too complicated and he chose to omit it.
 
@0celo7 I think it's quite ugly. The (apparently classic) reference is a 1950s paper by Regge & Wheeler
 
9:19 PM
@Danu About your question...is it not answered in the second paragraph of Carroll Sect. 7.2?
 
@0celo7 ...why do we do it?
(I obviously read Carroll's section lol)
 
I'm not sure I understand the question. What is unsatisfactory about what Carroll says?
 
He says: We decompose into irreps of SO(3)
...so why?
Why is this a good idea
 
Yes, because under rotations we have the natural irreps of the 00, 0i=i0 and ij components.
 
I was thinking of some deep reason
In any case, that "explanation" begs the question: Why do we want to do that (decompose into $00$, $0i$, $ij$)
 
9:25 PM
If you act on a symmetric 4x4 tensor with a rotation matrix, aren't those the things that get mixed together, i.e. the irreps?
 
But why should I care about that?
We never actually apply any rotation operators in the grav. wave formalism
 
Yeah you do. You need to rotate to determine the spin of the wave.
cf. Weinberg p. 256
 
Oh, really?
That's something.
Mukhanov does not do this and still derives all the interesting (read: The only tested) predictions
I still dont think this is the real reason
This should somehow majorly simplify things
but it's not clear why.
 
Mukhanov derives the graviton spin without using rotations?
 
No, he doesn't care about it :D
This is classical physics
there is no spin
So does Weinberg talk about this decomposition at all?
 
9:34 PM
I don't think so. Are you sure Carroll's section isn't just Post-Newtonian in disguise?
Those perturbations look awfully similar to those in Post-Newtonian.
 
I don't know Post-Newtonian.
Look at Mukhanov's book if you wanna compare maybe... it's the "original" presentation
 
Post-Newtonian is essentially Newtonian mechanics with GR corrections, i.e. perturbation theory.
I'll start comparing equations.
 
@0celo7 That shouldn't be the same thing then
Linearized GR is: $g_{\mu\nu}=\eta_{\mu\nu}+h_{\mu\nu}$ here the perturbation is small. Then analyze components of $h_{\mu\nu}$
Keep only terms $\mathcal O(h)$, i.e. for instance raise indices with $\eta^{\mu\nu}$
 
Of course. Post-Newtonian splits the perturbations in an identical fashion, however.
 
Of course the $h_{00}$ part will look like a Newtonian thing (it's the thing you get in the limit you take to derive the constant in Einstein's equations)
...but how does one even do metrics in Newtonian?
I'll learn about it in a couple of weeks in my next GR course
 
9:41 PM
@Danu Sneak peek: Weinberg Ch. 9
@Danu cf. Eqs. (9.1.57), (9.1.60), (9.1.61)
 
@Danu There are no summer term GR courses here...
 
Not quite the same, but close enough to make one remind me of the other.
 
I think he only gets scalar perturbations with Newtonian stuff? idk
 
@Danu What section in Mukhanov does grav waves?
 
Ch. 7
 
9:53 PM
@0celo7 Are there any textbooks that you are not able to find?
 
@Icosahedron lol
Have you ever heard of "the internet"? :)
 
Is that the lining in swimming shorts?
 
@yilduz Great response
 
@Danu Internet?
 
@ACuriousMind He likes this one much better.
 
10:01 PM
@0celo7 Link to his eyes, I didn't look at them before.
 
You want my cat's...eyes?
2
 
...I want to see how he looks in front.
 
GIVE ME HIS EYES
 
@0celo7 Damn, I really need to read that :D
 
@Danu O-ok...
 
10:03 PM
lol
 
You make me think of the Knaaren from Rayman: Hoodlum Havoc
"Eat his brains..."
"Spit in his eyes!"
 
@ACuriousMind Minor chewing damage in the upper right corner.
 
"Make him write bad checks."
"Tear off his flesh!"
"Let him run. Meat better with salt."
"Brain, fresh brain."
"Get him."
"Crush his bones."
"Skin him."
"Stick bamboo under his nails."
"Poke him in the eyes."
"Spit in his eye."
 
@0celo7 ...from you or the cat? ;)
I mean, I can understand gnawing on a text in frustration...
 
@ACuriousMind The euphemism was not required.
 
10:06 PM
The last time I bit something in frustration was my Game Boy Advance SP (bleu) when I was ~10.
 
I bit a steel plank once, damaged my teeth for about 5 years
 
@0celo7 Your edit read my mind.
 
Still have it, bite marks and all.
 
It's fully recovered by now
 
And why did you do that?
YOLO?
YOBSO? (You Only Bite Steel Once)
 
10:08 PM
I was angry
 
Was the steel just laying around...?
 
No, it was part of a closet
 
@Icosahedron ...which part of that do you think is an euphemism?
 
user54412
@Danu Two things come to mind. There is the whole 3+1 ADM crowd who just thinks about everything in terms of lapse, shift, and spatial tensor. Also, you can get different behaviors perhaps? Like how in cosmology we know vector perturbations would die out quickly, so we don't bother looking for them.
 
I bit off a chunk of my own tongue once, by accident. It freaked my parents the hell out when I spat out the piece :D
 
10:10 PM
@ACuriousMind Sentence one contrasted to sentence two
 
user54412
@ACuriousMind T. M. I.
 
@ChrisWhite It could have had more detail.
 
@ChrisWhite So you don't think there is a particularly awesome reason?
 
@Icosahedron ...which would have been way too much.
 
@ACuriousMind yuck
 
10:13 PM
I like that story. Guaranteed cringe from whoever hears it :D
 
user54412
@Danu I'd want to check the section myself before making a judgement.
 
Unless you have the magical 4chan desensitization.
 
@0celo7 Yeah, the listener should have normal human emotions :P
 
@ACuriousMind How big was the chunk, approximately? :P Actually, don't tell us.
 
Don't tell us.
 
10:15 PM
@ACuriousMind Tell me.
 
make a separate room for it
 
I'm not opening a room for talking about my tongue^^
But I will tell you that the doc stitched it back on and there isn't even a scar or something
 
sick
 
Is this normal for Springer?
 
@0celo7 You still didn't post the eyes.
@0celo7 I have 3 springer graduate texts and none of them have that defect.
 
10:19 PM
@0celo7 THat's crappy :\
 
I've stopped using it because it's about to tear off.
 
user54412
Are you using Chinese/Indian book suppliers?
 
Amazon.com
 
@ChrisWhite lol?
 
Anyone know how to fix that?
 
user54412
10:22 PM
@Danu That was a huge thing in undergrad. When students from those countries came back from visits home, they would bring suitcases full of cheap textbooks for people.
 
@0celo7 The internet, or local bookbinder.
 
@0celo7 Duct tape fixes everything.
 
@ChrisWhite Wow, interesting
 
@ACuriousMind Temporarily.
 
10:23 PM
The second review mentions crappy binding.
 
@Icosahedron The eventual doom of everything is inevitable.
 
@Icosahedron False! Heresy!
 
user54412
@Icosahedron You're not using enough duct tape!
 
I'm not sure how duct tape would help.
 
10:26 PM
All I could do is tape the cover to a page, which would eventually rip out.
 
Then you duct tape the ripped out page to the next one. Easy.
 
Tape it to the empty page you show on the picture, obviously!
 
@Danu This is tissue paper. It will rip too.
 
Make a page out of duct tape
Tape it into the book
attach the cover to the duct tape page with duct tape
Checkmate, atheists!
 
Good idea.
 
10:28 PM
@0celo7 If the pages are intact then it's fine.
 
@Danu Atapeists, you mean
 
We should start a new religion.
 
On the other hand, BLT is pretty much a tank.
 
@Danu Repeat $\infty$ and disprove ACuriousMind's statement about the inevitable demise of all objects.
 
The binding is so rugged and stiff it's ridiculous.
@Icosahedron What Springer books do you have?
Cambridge books have good binding.
 
10:31 PM
@Icosahedron Every object perishes. Every new application of the Holy Tape transforms it into something better, reincarnates it and cleanses the weakness from it
 
@0celo7 Photonics, nanotechnology, optics.
 
Although my copy of Cosmology didn't make it out of the paper cutter all the way. Edit: That's an Oxford book.
 
(So that it may become broken anew)
 
@Icosahedron Random.
 
@0celo7 It's for my lab reading.
 
10:32 PM
Duct tape is a 2-brane.
Duct-tape can host a gauge theory.
 
academic publishing is a joke. academics spend years writing a book for little remuneration, then it gets copyrighted, and you have spend 100$ on it/steal the pdf. there should be a funding agency to pay people to take sabbaticals and write textbooks, then print and sell them at cost price and release the pdfs/source for free.
 
@ACuriousMind Cleanse your belongings with duct tape!
 
The existence of duct tape pretty much proves string theory. How else could it be so strong?
 
@innisfree I have vowed to do all in my power to make my work available for free... if I ever produce anything of value
@0celo7 Gauge theory is a type of duct tape
 
Speaking of books...@ACuriousMind, you starting work on your QFT saga yet?
 
10:35 PM
@ACuriousMind is writing a book?!
 
...that statement is actually deeper than one may naively think
 
@Danu Oooh, what is the duct group though?
 
@innisfree Let's hope not! lol
 
@ACuriousMind I found you
 
I imagine him writing 4 volumes on QFT without a single index.
 
10:37 PM
@innisfree @0celo7: lol, I'm not writing a book. I mentioned once that I'd like to put all the stuff that seems scattered all over the place into a single thing but...that's just a distant fantasy
 
Only index theorems
 
@ACuriousMind Isn't that what everyone thinks they're doing?
 
@Icosahedron Damn you. I need more duct tape
 
user54412
The Berkeley Physics Course is a series of physics textbooks written mostly by UC Berkeley professors. The series consists of the following five volumes, each of which was originally used over the course of one semester at Berkeley: 1. Mechanics by Charles Kittel, et al. 2. Electricity and Magnetism by Edward M. Purcell 3. Waves by Frank S. Crawford, Jr. 4. Quantum physics by Eyvind H. Wichmann 5. Statistical Physics by Frederick Reif Volume 2, Electricity and Magnetism, by Purcell (Harvard), is particularly well known, and was influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject...
 
user54412
All it took was some Cold War politics
 
10:38 PM
@Danu Don't worry, I wouldn't market it as physics ;)
 
@ChrisWhite But this is undergrad :\
@ACuriousMind By the way... Have you heard of Baum - Eichfeldtheorie?
no English translation, regrettably
 
@Danu Is Baum the author or is it about trees? :D
2
 
Acorn field theory? Huh? Rusty German is rusty.
 
...lol
 
Taking tree-level diagrams to a new level
2
 
10:40 PM
Eich = gauge
 
Oh, I guarantee I never knew that.
 
In any case, it's a mathematics book.
It does "Riemannian geometry" the way Leeb does it
 
Leeb again
 
aka do topology on fiber bundles and say Riem. is an application :P
 
That...sounds like something I would like^^
 
10:41 PM
Yeah
Characteristic classes
 
::Nakahara PTSD::
 
Nakahara is meh
 
Your mom is... eh, I agree.
 
I think it's almost offensive to mathematics to pretend to "cover" all the stuff that book does.
 
@0celo7 You're right that the acorn tree is Eiche, by the way. ;)
 
10:43 PM
Baum - Eichenfeldtheorie
:D
 
@0celo7 Did you experience astral projections lately?
 
@Icosahedron Sure did.
@ACuriousMind The official test to see how Einstein would react to modern physics advances is to put the relevant text in front of my cat and see if he rubs his face on it.
Now I need a physical copy of Hawking & Ellis
 
@0celo7 Sooo...Einstein would have rubbed his face all over Straumann, and maybe nibbled on him a little?
 
Yes. Einstein had some secret fetishes.
 
Makes amazing slashfic, but not good as a scientific theory :P
 
10:49 PM
time for bed, cya guys
 
bye
 
cya
I pity people who don't have Fridays off :P
 
THE EYES!
He looks pissed :D
There you have it, @Icosahedron
 
@ACuriousMind That's Weinberg btw.
 
10:54 PM
@Icosahedron: BTW, would you be partial to d20 as a nickname? ;)
 
I'm terrible at references.
Addressing it to him doesn't fix that.
 
Hint: What can you use an icosahedron for?
 
Haha
You assume I know what that is!
 
It's a twenty-sided polyhedron!
 
I can't into Greek
 
10:59 PM
I have no idea what you would call it in other words. It's Polyeder in German and polyhedron in English, as far as I know
 
I know what a polyhedron is
How could I know homology otherwise
 
ah, you only meant you didn't know the icosa-, sorry^^
 
TBH, I've been reading that as Isodecahedron until just now.
 
@0celo7 Purely from the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms, obviously
 
@ACuriousMind Sure...
I did a dozen triangularizations in Nakahara, but I have no clue how to do them anymore. A danger of self study.
 
11:02 PM
Anyway, 'd20' is RPG speak for a twenty-sided die, i.e. an icosahedron.
@0celo7 It happens to normal students, too
 
Well, in psychology speak, reading a book in 3 weeks is not ideal because you can't achieve long term potentiation through short-term learning.
@ACuriousMind Normal? I didn't know we labeled people here. This triggers me.
 
@0celo7 I don't think someone who visits 4chan can be triggered :P
Desensitation, remember?
 
Oh I can (be triggered). I had to seriously calm myself down after listening to a gay black kid proclaim how awesome it is being black and gay because everything can be offensive to him.
"I'd love to see a college reject me"
@ACuriousMind You should take this for fun.
 
Note the you(r) error at the start :P
I seem to be quite normal^^
 
11:20 PM
Yes, I have a hypothesis that topology is linked to psychopathy. You seem to be evidence against it.
Of course, you could be Dexter-tier and know how to game the system.
Do you know what your numbers (<5) are?
 
@0celo7 Uh...I closed the tab already, but I think the first one was ~1.5 and the second ~2.3
 
In America, 1.5 for primary is "what are you smoking and why are you so friendly" tier.
 
@0celo7 That doesn't sound too bad ;)
 
11:40 PM
@ACuriousMind Lol
 
@0celo7 Not the field theory you were looking for?
Oddly, the cover picture of the book is for me "Organ Shortage: The Solutions"... :D
 
@ACuriousMind Hence the link
I was browsing GTM for no real reason
 
Ah, not just me, then? Very good, Springer! :D
 
@ACuriousMind My end of year project for calculus is to teach a certain topic as a group to the class
We went from point-set topology to complex calculus to multivariable calculus to...introduction to matrices
I'm looking for the most scary looking linear algebra book
 
...linear algebra can be scary?
 
11:49 PM
When it's in Graduate Texts in Mathematics, it can.
 
...did you have to link me that personality site? Now I'm testing myself...
 

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