My mother's uncle dropped out of HS to serve in WWII as a doctor/medic (at the young age of 17, had to lie to get in). Served ~25 years in the military as a doctor (all education was paid for by the US Army, so he didn't pay a dime for it), then retired (with full pension) & opened up his own practice that he operated for another 40 years before he died.
He was able to leave $250k for each of his 8 kids
My mom told me this my 3rd year of undergrad and I go, "WTF Ma! I could've dropped out of HS, got my GED, and done that too!"
Are you going to have to sit through lower division "intro to multivariable calculus", "intro to ordinary differential equations", "intro to linear algebra"?
K. The way this is set up is Monday, Wednesday and Friday have the same structure. Classes start at 8:00, last for 50 minutes and there's a 15 minute break between classes.
Tuesday and Thursday start at 8:10, classes are 75 minutes and there's a 15 minute break.
Thus, Monday, Wednesday and Friday have the same structure: Linear Algebra at 8:00. Physics Lecture/Lab at 10:10. Wednesday has the additional "How We Think" seminar at 11:15.
The general structure for Tuesday and Thursday is: ODEs at 8:10. Physics recitation at 11:10. English at 12:40. Thursday has the additional Intro Comp Sci module at 3:40.
@StanShunpike yes! Apparently I got the highest score on the midterm with a margin of 11%. I think I'm the only one actually doing the homework, w/o looking at the solutions manual.
which is probably stupid of me, seeing as how it's eating up all my time, leaving me with no time to try to do my particle physics or group theory homework...
The problems in griffiths get difficult! Mostly in terms of the amount of algebra you have to do.
Like one problem -- I think it was 11.21 in the 4ed if you have the book in front of you -- you need it to be accurate to third order in frequency. So I stopped, and figured "Oh crap, I can't show that my answer is accurate to third order in frequency!" So I went back and did everything in third order in frequency.
and 5 pages of work and just as much scratchwork I got the right answer and for various reasons the only correction that came into play canceled, so I didn't actually need third order accuracy q.q
AND I found out that renormalization is not just a problem in QFT, it arises already in electrodynamics
so I feel like a lot of what I know about electrodynamics is a lie.
@NeuroFuzzy nice! Good for you! well, it's not surprising renormalization is necessary in QFT. I find it more surprising actually that Griffith's exercises are so demanding at times. They don't look that long. But then again, I suppose the length of a problem statement isn't an indication of how hard it is.
@NeuroFuzzy I know what you mean tho. My economics class right now is basically shut up and calculate. No proofs. Its kind of boring mathematically but interesting concepts.
@Danu It's terrible! Why hide it! I feel like it's all a lieeeee!!!
I kept going, "Oh, that's confusing. Well, I'm sure it will be solved later," whenever I thought about it. And then I realized... wait, no, it's a gaping hole in something I thought could at least be made mathematically pure! Or maybe it's still mathematically pure even if the self-interaction is a bit acausal? I haven't had too much time to look into that sort of thing.
I might learn something in ODEs and I'll learn some programming, but linear algebra and English are kill myself tier.
@ACuriousMind Contrary to your comment, I think inorganic chemistry will be interesting. All sorts of nuclear chemistry, spectral lines, probably a little quantum chemistry mixed in.
@0celo7 Everything I've heard about studying chemistry is that it consists of memorizing myriads of more or less patternless reactions, names, and methods, although they always promise otherwise
Perhaps it's different where you are, good for you, then!
@0celo7 Well you see, there's this thing called rape. DON'T do it. Let me stress again the don't. It's not a particularly polite thing to do. In fact, it's probably one of the least polite things you could do. So remember, don't do it.
@ACuriousMind in the rep theory course, I could still pass the final but hw is a big portion and I spent too much time on other courses. So that's just my fault.
The particle physics course is mostly the same but... I think it has to do more with knowing absolutely no QFT or anything. So I don't know what's physically allowed.
Is it possible to explain why resistance in an electric network "changes" the potential, but a resistance-free (theoretically speaking) doesn't? Not sure if that made any sense.
I am a physics high-school student so my knowledge is not very deep on the subject.
We started learnning about quantum mechanics and on some processes that my teacher described as random. I began to think on the concept of randomness and question it, thinking how can a process or an outcome be de...
Would you say that a quantum process is "random"? My opinion, as you can see from the answer I gave (and even more in the comment to the other), is that it is really a bad word to use...
> I been trying to update a universe simulator, which yes, deals with orbiting planets. But goes much farther and predicts the temperatures of planets. Uses particle physics to generate esoteric things such as comet tails. Black body radiation, Albedo, Light intensity. All without data fitting. (without fudging constants to resolve observed discrepancies).
There's (a) too much extra physics this guy is incorporating for it to work on any useful timescale and (b) way too much 'fine grain' details that are in the 'universe'
Unless he really means 'galaxy' (which is still probably impossible) or even 'local neighborhood'
@gonenc as far as I know, there is no mathematical model of quantum measurements using random processes; however flipping a coin can be modelled by a random process. This are two different problems in my opinion
@gonenc Yeah, the issue is that I'm not sure what "random" means when we say it of a physical phenomenon. If I know the frequentist distribution of the outcomes of a large number of trials, and it isn't a delta spike at one "deterministic result" within the margin of error, is that sufficient to call the phenomenon random?
Also, as yuggib says, "random/stochastic process" has a mathematically different meaning from the colloquial random.
@ACuriousMind Naïvely it is not if it does not obey the law of large numbers; and the measurement of an observable in QM certainly does not satisfy the law of large numbers
Nope. Nintendo invented Infinite Energy Battery Technology™, but then patented it to ensure that it could only ever be used for video game cartridges. — Paul D. Waite35 mins ago
Randomness means lack of pattern or predictability in events.[1] A random sequence of events, symbols or steps has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual random events are by definition unpredictable, but in many cases the frequency of different outcomes over a large number of events (or "trials") is predictable
In BBS's sting theory book, in the equation(2.143),it says that $$\text{tr} \omega ^N=\prod _{n=1}^{\infty } \left(\prod _{i=1}^{24} \text{tr} \omega ^{\alpha _{-n}^i \:\alpha _n^i}\right)=\prod _{n=1}^{\infty } \frac{1}{\left(1-\omega ^n\right)^{24}}$$. I agree with the first equality, but not t...
@gonenc no you don't...give a quantum state and the evolution operator, and it is possible to give you all the probabilities of the measurements of observables
@gonenc My point was that not all random processes follow the Law of Large Numbers (using your own quote). So saying 'random processes follow the LLN' is false (some random processes do, but not all)
@gonenc Well, it's not wrong, Berliner are also the citizens of Berlin, but most people indeed rather associate the jelly donut of the same name to that
@ACuriousMind yeah, last couple of months have been really hectic, but now the spring semester is over, just left to do the exams and I ll have my thesis alone to do next, so that's good. How about yourself? which phase are you in?
@ACuriousMind well I know roughly the likely possibilities which are: percolation theory, rare event sampling in nucleation processes or topological defects in liquid crystals (all simulation oriented)
@ACuriousMind Doubt anyone at an academic gathering really cares if you have a degree or not if you're into the subject and can understand it at the necessary level. I scrolled past the couple of previous summer schools, and it seems it's never completely full (assuming 35 is full), and there were participants who only held a BSc. Go for it if you're interested, summer schools are fun.
@alarge Thanks, didn't occur to me to look at the participants of the old ones. Well, I guess I'll give it a try then. @Phonon, how did you stumble across those?
@ACuriousMind a friend suggested the second one to me, because he knew im into RG theories
@ACuriousMind and the first one, well because it s mathematica related :D, other than that I usually do have a look at upcoming events, in case there s one I really would want to attend (specially if related to what Im doing etc)
If you're into computational physics-y stuff, in Europe there's CECAM through which a lot of activity (workshops/tutorials/etc) are being arranged. I don't know if there's anything similar for more theory oriented stuff
