Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

staff.science.uu.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#11

Post by mindcrime »

I love this kind of site. Not that you can't scour up the content yourself using Google, but here's the thing... when you're trying to "teach yourself" something complex, one of the challenges you run into (in my experience) is understanding the order of the dependencies for prerequisites and sub-topics. And nothing is more frustrating than trying to read a book or a paper and feeling totally lost because you're missing something that you should have learned first, but you don't even know exactly what the "something" is. :-(

As someone who considers himself something of an autodidact and who is always trying to learn new stuff, I really appreciate a resource that can point at a bunch of stuff and say (even in an approximate sense) "do this in this order". It really does make a difference.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#14

Post by lint_roller »

mgalka wrote: post #10
mkadlec wrote: post #7

Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like me)

Same here. It's actually a really good post! Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?

Everyone's an armchair economist so I wouldn't count econ out.

I think that math/physics are more accessible to the layman. I know where to go if I want to get deeper into this subject.

I really don't know how to start becoming an amateur chemist or biologist. I've wanted to learn more about synthetic biology and gene therapy, but it's not as simple as cracking open a math book or going to a dev bootcamp. I wish these resources existed though! My best guess is because exploring chem and bio have bigger resource requirements like lab space.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#15

Post by unchocked »

lint_roller wrote: post #14
mgalka wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. It's actually a really good post! Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?

Everyone's an armchair economist so I wouldn't count econ out. I think that math/physics are more accessible to the layman. I know where to go if I want to get deeper into this subject. I really don't know how to start becoming an amateur chemist or biologist. I've wanted to learn more about synthetic biology and gene therapy, but it's not as simple as cracking open a math book or going to a dev bootcamp. I wish thes…

Biology, and I Assume chemistry as well, are in practice all about lore; the peculiarities of particular entities are where the action is & theory is a relatively small thing that falls out of that. So not only do you need a lab to do experiments, you need to be hanging around a lab to pick up all this disjointed lore.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#16

Post by neutronicus »

Unfortunately, the section on Plasma Physics is rather sparse.

Introduction to Plasma Physics by Francis F. Chen and Fundamentals of Plasma Physics by Paul Bellan are good next-step texts, and this crowd in particular might enjoy Birdsall and Langdon's Plasma Physics Via Computer Simulation

Also on the computational topic, Kane S. Yee's 1966 paper "Numerical Solution..."

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#17

Post by neffy »

mgalka wrote: post #10
mkadlec wrote: post #7

Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like me)

Same here. It's actually a really good post! Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?

Oh it happens all the time in econ - although one could argue that economics at the moment does deserve some of it. You regularly get emails and even the occasional book, linking to yet another youtube misconception of how money, banking and the economy work. I usually reply pointing out the time at which the first provable mistake is made, and I've yet to get over 5 minutes. They do get extra points for being vaguely anti-semitic before that point.

Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

#19

Post by selimthegrim »

ajkjk wrote: post #13
santaclaus wrote: post #12

I'm surprised to see no explicit mention of differential geometry.

Agreed. But there are many implicit mentions. Lots of physicists pick it up on the side in other subjects, which probably isn't ideal.

Probably the book by Nakahara is most people's first stop.
Post reply on HN