Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000) • Hacker News Board

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#41

Post by petermcneeley » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #7

As an odd coincidence, I did the same experiment on a shoestring budget with substandard equipment also. I too used a fancy computer algorithm to get a best fit. Except that I managed to get four significant decimal places in the result — an improvement over the (also outdated) textbook. The author of the angry rant had a life-defining experience of overwhelming frustration. The same scenario resulted in a positive l…

But in some way we all end up in the same place :) (HN)

I really enjoyed the labs and it was seeing the predictions pan out in front of my eyes that actually got me interested in the first place. But you have to know what your getting into. The labs are extremely time consuming and required preparation.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#42

Post by awesomeMilou » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #25

abhayhegde wrote: post #19

Pretty funny, but what seemed disturbingly true: > Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should've declared CS. I still wouldn't have any women, but at least I'd be rolling in cash. I wish academia pays better.

It's not just the pay; the pressure as a graduate student and not-yet-tenured professor is immense. The darkly humorous "A (de)motivational letter", purportedly by one "Prof. Hardass Slavedriver", sums it up: https://lifesciencephdadventures.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/a-...

> The darkly humorous "A (de)motivational letter"

It's not just darkly humorous, it could almost be satire:

> It has to the the kind of chemistry that people read and then jizz in their pants, they’re so excited about it. That’s right: we only do jizz-worthy chemistry

I'll assume due to the nature of chemistry, the field doesn't suffer as much from non-reproducible data, but overall, this sentence alone might explain cases like the Francesca Gino fraud [0], or why the head of Stanford resigned over integrity issues [1]? Or the Schön scandal? [2]

I mean take the analogy seriously for a moment: What the author is asking for in the analogie's universe, is for one of his students to just invent Stable Diffusion so he can generate pornography for his colleagues to.. well?

But no word about integrity or honesty. Nothing. Just results.

Author took it as inspiration:

> The truth is that under all the profanities, and the slave-driver mentality of the professor I saw someone who truly wanted to develop their students.

PhD students of HN enlighten me, after reading this crap, how is this "slave-driver" not just incentivizing to cheat?

[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/08/gino-ari... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/19/stanford-pre... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#43

Post by archgoon » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:51 AM UTC

splittingTimes wrote: post #5

Exactly my experience back in the days doing the mandatory "advanced experimental physics laboratory semester" where you had to do like 14 vastly different experiment of the caliber described in that post in the course of one semester on old equipment that would break during the experiment, with less than motivated PhD students or post grads as teachers. Of the 14 experiments only two worked and we got the expected r…

[dead]

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#44

Post by mensetmanusman » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

phtrivier wrote: post #20

itsthecourier wrote: post #2

The CS conclusion was worthy though

The double irony would be for the author to have persevered in physics and now hold several patents over solid state batteries that are going to revolutionize society and fix climate change, while their CS major friends just got fired by some GAFAM for not getting enough minimum-pay workers to click on funny cat memes.

Even if true the CS students would still be ahead earnings wise. /source I went into physics/materials

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#45

Post by NL807 » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

appplication wrote: post #11

Not really related of the article, but a question I just realized I don’t know the answer to: where does the temperature of an atom “live”? Is it entirely in the electrons? Does the nucleus have any temperature?

Not a physicist, but I think temperature lives in motion of particles, let it be electrons, the nucleus, whole atoms, or otherwise. Because electrons shroud the nucleus and have much less mass, they are more prone with external interactions where they can change momentum by absorbing and releasing energy. The nucleus is not exempt from this, but takes a not more energy to change their momentum. That being said, "temperature" as we are accustomed to, is more like a statistical average of the total motion of all particles in the system.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#46

Post by dang » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:06 AM UTC

lucisferre wrote: post #6

This was one of the funniest things going around the Physics department when I was in school. I can assure you it is older than 2007. 1998 or ‘99 iirc.

Earliest I've been able to trace is 2000. Anyone have an earlier copy?

https://web.archive.org/web/20001031193257/http://www.cs.wis...

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#47

Post by dang » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

Electron Band Structure in Germanium, My Ass (2001) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360479 - Feb 2018 (38 comments)

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2513293 - May 2011 (97 comments)

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#48

Post by 1letterunixname » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

lucisferre wrote: post #6

This was one of the funniest things going around the Physics department when I was in school. I can assure you it is older than 2007. 1998 or ‘99 iirc.

I want the bibtex for that. ;)

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#49

Post by evilotto » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:12 AM UTC

spxtr wrote: post #3

Pretty funny. Having taught low-temperature condensed matter labs, a big part of the grade is figuring out what went wrong, and either correcting for it, or at least acknowledging that it went wrong. The student needed to give more information about the experimental setup (what instruments did they use? four point or two point resistance? resistivity vs resistance? what is R_0?) and why they think the experiment didn…

My understanding of undergrad lab work is that the point is not to get results, it's to learn how to do lab work.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

#50

Post by 1letterunixname » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:12 AM UTC

jetru wrote: post #31

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #30

So what was the final grade - did whoever did the grading just look at the pictures? did he quit and go into CS, is he on HN? Did he make any other discoveries regarding the assiness of other fields of human endeavor as the years went by?

Stalking the LinkedIn, it seems he quit, switched to a PhD in CS and has been working at Google for the last 12 years.

Wisdom is taking your own advice. Good on them.

Also, there are many a decent xysicists in tech. Physics skews to supernerds like good CS folks, so there's quite a bit of problem-solving and subject matter crossover beyond the closest neighbor, EE/CS.

The Goog has pockets of okayness here and there, so maybe they've found a comfortable home after 12 years. :)