61–70 of 160 posts
Get a real pen and paper, get a real physical book, sit and solve problems with pen and paper for hours every day for a few months. Then you will pass the exams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Methods_in_the_Ph...
Define what "understanding physics" means to you and then figure out how to get to your goal.
There is one sure way, and it’s a test of your fortitude. You find a a college textbook with the answers to the even-numbered problems in the back. You sit down in a warm or hot room, and solve them. If the textbook is in its 4th printing or so, the answers are correct. On a few, you’ll have to work for hours. Now here is a very, very, important point. All the learning occurs on the problems you struggle with. In the…
> You sit down in a warm or hot room What is wrong with airconditioning?
Was a physics student. IMO the best book you can drill questions from is Boas' Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences. It offers fairly succinct yet comprehensive overviews of various fields of math. I still have my copy sitting at home. It is considered an essential textbook for any physics student. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Methods_in_the_Ph...
There is one sure way, and it’s a test of your fortitude. You find a a college textbook with the answers to the even-numbered problems in the back. You sit down in a warm or hot room, and solve them. If the textbook is in its 4th printing or so, the answers are correct. On a few, you’ll have to work for hours. Now here is a very, very, important point. All the learning occurs on the problems you struggle with. In the…
> You sit down in a warm or hot room What is wrong with airconditioning?
- on Saturday, I wanted to learn how to write a Kubernetes configuration file from scratch, so I decided I'd deploy a static web page
- for the static web page, I decided it should return pictures of teapots w/ a 418 status code, and initially tried to return responses using netcat, which I got working on my local machine, but not in a container
- instead of using netcat, I decided that nginx is for people that don't like over-engineering their weekend hack projects, so clearly I needed to write my own web server and hacked out a janky Elixir server that serves up a poop emoji teapot image [1][2]
- then I started working on an overly over-engineered HTTP server, which so far only has date headers [3]
- then last night I randomly wondered how HTTP 2 works, looked for the RFC [4]
- then I remembered working on the date header, and I wondered how headers work in HTTP2, and I learned they use Huffman encoding, and so my next side tangent is to read up on Huffman encoding and add HTTP 2 header support to my HTTP server! [5]
TL;DR -- I made a poop joke and turned it into a learning opportunity
[1] https://imgur.com/a/rZcL0Rw
[2] https://github.com/amorphid/i_am_a_teapot_container
[3] https://github.com/amorphid/hottpotato-elixir
Check out https://edeeu.education/. The founder, Alex Coward, is an ex-Berkeley math professor. To apply to have him as your director of studies, fill out the form at the bottom of https://edeeu.education/alexander-coward. This is affordable (currently $330/month).
I have the same aims as you, also learning math/physics in my 30s, and it's been a huge boost to move from purely self-directed online learning to having sessions with a math professor and a planned curriculum.
Here's how I go from dumb to less dumb: - on Saturday, I wanted to learn how to write a Kubernetes configuration file from scratch, so I decided I'd deploy a static web page - for the static web page, I decided it should return pictures of teapots w/ a 418 status code, and initially tried to return responses using netcat, which I got working on my local machine, but not in a container - instead of using netcat, I dec…