Physicsblr - Blog Posts
fuck you education system for making it seem like physics is a terrible subject
physics girlboss moment of the day scheduled an interview at the country's largest accelerator nothing can stop me now
Saw my first reactor core. I am a changed woman
The math cafe is my favourite place to work because it has the best views and biggest blackboards
06.09.2020 - 6/100 Days of Productivity
• spent some time outside reading • practiced piano • practiced my Spanish conversational skills (gracias @huangcha!!!) • Advanced Dynamics notes • revision of Spanish vocabulary •
🎧 S.Prokofiev - Piano Concertos
Physicist, holding General Relativity in the one, and Quantumphysics in the other hand:
Now Kiss!
my opinion on quantum physics is that we should stop looking into it. it's none of our business and frankly the particles seem to agree
Wouldn't mind having one.
Wanna be friends with physics/astrophysics major students, anyone up for it 👀
very specific types of physicists
emeritus: a well-meaning retired professor who still frequents the department. occasionally seen jogging up and down the halls of the lab. it’s how he gets his daily exercise. his field of research is obsolete and he spends most of his days making art based on physics equations. asks all of the female undergrads if they plan to teach high school physics.
star child: no one will measure up to this alumnus. they started research in high school, graduated from undergrad a year early with a few papers already under their belt, and finished their phd (at a very prestigious university) in two years. they visit occasionally to present their research and talk to the undergrad physics students. very down to earth and kind. undergrads, grad students, and professors alike are in awe.
father figure: this prof’s lectures are full of dad jokes, metaphors comparing the behaviors of particles with sugared-up three-year-olds, and digressions about something that’s more fun to talk about than the subject matter. says “i’m not angry, just disappointed” when the class does poorly on an exam. when you go to his office hours there is almost always a child or two underneath his desk or drawing on his whiteboard (the bottom third of which is always covered in stick figures and scribbles). intensely watched the construction from his office window as a new laboratory was being built.
academic rival: you were friends over the summer when you were both doing research but they became distant. small talk always turns into bickering about the importance of your respective research when you run into each other getting coffee in the common room. begrudgingly you admit to yourself, they’re really good at what they do. thank god you don’t belong to the same research group.
harsh but kind: brilliant researcher with high expectations of their students. will offer and make you tea as they grade your problem sets (with commentary) in front of you. after your semester in their class, you buy a bag of loose-leaf jasmine green tea because they got you hooked on it.
the politician: buddies with some higher-ups in university admin and the heads of other colleges. your peers derail class by bringing up current events. has a fixation on swords and genealogy. a bit of an anglophile. you took apart a transistor radio with them once. will make formal complaints to the math department on your behalf.
melancholy teaching professor: very cynical from a career in academia but here to have fun. one of the friendliest faces in the department. organizes the students and faculty to do outreach and lugs physics demos all around the tri-county area. talks to the undergrads like they are people. always kind of sad, it makes you wish you could fix all of the ills of academia for them.
8 / 1 / 2018 //
Tomorrow I start my finals month and let’s just say physics midterm isn’t really the thing I want to start off with. but this is my life/desk situation right now, flooded with tons of formulas that just won’t go in my head easily:(
Hi ! Since a friend asked me for some tips to study better, I thought that it would be a good idea to share them with you all !
First of all, I started to have really good grades only once I started to apply exactly what is on this list ! On the beginning of the last year I had grades that went around 15/20 (French scholar system works with grades on 20, not on 100), which was good but I wasn’t the first of my class at all, and then in the end of the year and even right now, I have an average of 17/20 (without P.E obviously lmao), which is considered extremely good as a scientific senior student here !
Anyway I think that most of those tips are already well known but maybe you’ll find things that you didn’t think would work but actually do !
1- Do all of your homework (if possible)
This is some basic tip but God knows that it is the most important thing ever. Practice makes perfect, and I KNOW that sometimes you’ll be too tired to calculate the weight of a satellite which turns around the Earth in 239 days but even if you don’t feel like writing it down, just try to think about it, to find the methodology to do this exercise, because you have high chances to have this exercise again during your test ! Which lead us to the next advice…
2- Always write down the correction of your exercises when your teacher corrects them in class
Well I do think that it is the most important thing that I didn’t do last year and that I do now and it helps me so much. Like I said earlier, in maths, physics, literature and so on, there’s always a methodology that works almost universally for each type of exercise. So you have to listen carefully in class and take notes in case you didn’t understand something that might be important, and even after writing the methods and the corrections you don’t know what to do…
3- Ask a professor or a friend, or check videos on YouTube if this is still blurry in your mind
WE DON’T REPEAT THIS OFTEN ENOUGH BUT YOUR PROFESSORS ARE HERE AND PAID TO HELP YOU ! Even if you don’t like them, if you want to understand a subject you have to ask someone who could explain it to you ! If you’re in college and asking a teacher is not possible, then ask a friend you know they can explain it to you ! Don’t be ashamed of not understanding, this is absolutely natural. Then, if you still don’t understand, maybe you’ll find the answer to your question at our dear friend Google or even better, on YouTube ! Personally I think that Khan Academy is absolutely great for sciences ! Also I don’t really know about american YouTube channels that focus on school, so it’s up to you to find a channel that suits you ! (For my frenchies passant par là Les bons profs et Yvan Monka mes sauveurs).
4- Do not spend time uselessly !!!
Dear God how much time I spent on Twitter and YouTube just REFRESHING FOR NOTHING knowing that I have a test the next day 😭 I realized how much time Twitter would take me each day during the summer holidays so I decided to « delete » my account (I just log in once in a while so my tweets stay here, I don’t want to loose my threads on the Attack Titan and Hanji Zoe).
I also decided this year that once I’m home after school, I’ll just use my phone while I’m eating something and then leave it in the kitchen, and NOT USE IT until I finished all of my homework, even if it’s 10pm and half of my friends sent me a text about interesting things ! Also OBVIOUSLY no Netflix and series and anime once I’m done, but…
5- Don’t overwork yourself
If your studies are your priority like me, then you’ll put your homework before your activities, or even your sleep, because you’d feel guilty or even more stressed because you didn’t learn everything you had to and your test is the next day. Until now I can sleep at 1am and wake up the next day at 6 if I didn’t learn everything, and do that all the week until I have nothing to learn (this is an extremely rare case).
DO NOT DO THAT ALL THE TIME
You can allow you to do that when it’s a really important test, but if this is a really quick vocabulary test, then you should prioritize your sleep ! Then, if you’re really in deep shit you can learn on your way to school (flashcards yayy)! Sometimes when you’re really in a hurry your brain can memorize things so much faster I swear ! But of course, if you want to not do that all the time you have to be really organized, so next tip is…
6- Organize your week if you can !
This is so important to do that omg ! This is the newest thing I’ve been doing and it helps me sooooooooooo much omg ! Personally I have a bullet journal in which I organize what I’ll do each day, and (evenifthosedaysicompletelylostmybalance) now I can find some time for me to draw or just to sleep a bit more lol.
Make To-Do lists, have your own Bujo, just write down everything you have to do this week on your phone, at least you know you won’t miss something that might be important, and in the long run, you’ll find more time to learn your lessons and to do more exercises, and at the end of the semester you’ll have better grades ! But of course this is a question of MOTIVATION !
7- Last but not least, find a way to motivate you !
I think that if you want better grades, that’s for a reason after all ! Then if you’re feeling too lazy to work, just think about the reason that motivates you to go to class and to learn your lessons !
Making your parents proud, doing the job of your dreams, having a lot of money maybe, I don’t know what motivated you to read this post so far but just think about the pride you’ll have when receiving a 98/100! Then you’ll be able to help your friends with the subject you used to struggle with, and btw this is truly a wonderful feeling to graduate with all of your friends ! After that, the reward of holidays will be such a delightful thing 💕
This is all for now ! I might update this post if I remember something that I missed ! Also I’m really sorry if my English is awful, it’s been a while since I truly practiced it !
Just remember that even if you are in the top, intelligence doesn’t do all of the work and this is a progressive work that will help you getting even better results !
Edit: omgggg thank you so much for all those notes💕💕💕 ! I’d never imagine that this post would be this helpful !! I’m kind of curious about how much those tips helped you during the semester ! So if you think you see a progression do not hesitate to hit me up or leave a comment !
the physics students
as requested by the wonderful @starferns
the chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall, covered in equations and graphs
visualizing a problem in your mind, step by step
cold water with ice cubes and a slice of lemon
diagrams drawn hastily on the corner of your paper, scribbled lines and half formed thoughts
replicating famous experiments and demonstrations
watching youtube videos late at night, picking apart complex theories
having an instinct for force diagrams and direction of motion
rushed, messy handwriting
finding beauty in motion and calculation and precision
seeing the universe as unimaginably small and unimaginably large at the same time
a well-worn grey sweater, frayed a little at the sleeves
equations scribbled on your arm until you know them by heart
studying newton and meitner and plank, all those who went before
talking with your hands, forming the shapes of arcs and trajectories as you work through a problem
long hallways and cold, sunny days
late night study groups
staring up at the sky, knowing exactly why and how the planets move as they do
trying einstein’s thought experiments
an old grandfather clock, pendulum measuring the passage of time
pages filled with calculations and precise strings of digits
Day 13/100 of productivity · 1/30/21
Some late night notes for today! My boyfriend fell asleep really early and I had nothing better to do, so I decided it was time to study a little bit more. I feel like my motivation has been really high again lately & I am thankful for that, it would be really difficult to be this busy if I wasn't motivated.
Learning to like Physics
I actually cannot believe how much I used to hate Physics until last year, but then I actually took the time and effort to understand it and?? it’s so cool and fun and easy?? unreal.
It literally seemed impossible for me and I legit thought I wouldn’t be able to graduate because I was never gonna pass Physics (I’m a Math major so we actually have 4 required Physics courses). I don’t know what the point of this is but, don’t be afraid of Physics guys!! (or any other subject!!) yes it’s frustrating as hell and you feel dumb for not having a clue about what is happening or how to work out the problems but I swear once it clicks for you (and it will) it’s gonna be great.
So if anyone needs a step by step (for college/uni), here’s one:
Google is your best friend, the internet has plenty of videos/papers/worked out problems for you to check out. The most important thing to look for is drawings and videos that help you visualize what’s going on. In most of general physics, the key is to see what forces are acting, and from that follows everything else.
Know your core equations. Honestly it’s always the same ones in the end.
For mechanics: you absolutely gotta know Newton’s Laws, Work and its relation to Kinetic/Potential Energy. Momentum is also important.
For thermodynamics: pV = nRT, Boyle/Gay Lussac etc (note that they’re all connected), Carnot’s Cycle.
For electromagnetism: Maxwell’s equations. This is as far as I’ve gotten in my studies.
Understand where the formulas come from, rather than learning them by heart. For me, this was necessary because my memory is absolutely shit so there was no way I could remember every variation. But most of the formulas actually do make sense, and once you’ve drawn out a diagram of what’s happening, you can work them out yourself.
For the previous point, I suggest you watch and rewatch your professor’s explanation until you get the gist. Don’t get discouraged if it’s not immediately crystal clear, seek out other explanations if you need to. Then try to do it yourself.
ASK. FOR. HELP. I cannot stress this enough, do not feel ashamed about asking questions in class or during office hours. There are no stupid questions, and you’re paying thousands every year for people to teach you. Also physics is hard, so you’re pretty much expected to not understand immediately. Moreover, I can guarantee there’s at least one other person in the room with the same question who’s too afraid to ask. I was that person, and I failed the class because of it. Don’t be me.
Practice until you’re able to do most variations of standard problems. Once you’re able to do a certain problem, try to change it and see what happens. You don’t have to crunch the numbers all over again, go with your intuition first. Then you can calculate everything and see if you were correct.
This is all I’ve got at the moment. It applies to General Physics because I’m still pretty shit at Mathematical Physics (Rational Mechanics?) lmao, which is why I don’t talk about Lagrangians and such here.
If anyone has any other tips (for Mathematical Physics as well!) , please feel free to add them. Note that I’m from Italy, and this is what it was like for me. Other countries might have different ways of testing or focus on some formulas that I haven’t included. Do what works for you, obviously.
Good luck STEM students, I know it’s hard, but hopefully worth it in the long run :)
january 12, 2020
for the past 2ish weeks ive been in the protoproto stages of starting physics research with a professor :') the first steps of course are understanding special relativity and finding a suitable journal to put it all in 🌌
problem solving tips that actually worked for me
Hey there!
If you have a math, or science related subject (like I always do), you’ll find that you really can’t escape analysis and problem solving, especially if you’re majoring in something science or maths related. So I am here to share some tips that actually made studying technical subjects a little bit easier and manageable for me in college:
Practice solving. If you have a subject that requires you to solve, you really have to practice solving, there is no easy way out of this one. This allows you to develop your own technique in solving the problem. You can start by doing the problems you did in class, then venture out to some examples in textbooks, then further into the problems in the textbooks until you get the hang of how the concepts and theories are applied.
Listen during class. I know, it’s boring. But you have to do this. This way, you’ll be able to understand the topic once it is presented to you. In my opinion, it’s better if you let an expert explain it because they know the important bits in the lesson. Then study it afterwards on your own to develop your own techniques.
Ask your professors. Don’t be afraid to ask questions in class. Or if you’re shy, you can ask them after the class. However, it’s important that you ask them about the lesson when you already did your part; meaning: you already studied the material/solution over and over again but there’s just something that you can’t seem to grasp.
Study before the class. Studying the lesson in advance doesn’t hurt. Plus, it works because you already have an idea about it. However, I don’t do it usually. What I do is that prior the discussion, I study the lessons that are going to be essential to the next topic. Example: Say that our topic later will be about introduction to thermodynamics (which includes derivation of various thermodynamic formulas); what I’m going to study instead is the different integration and derivation techniques, and different basic thermodynamics concepts like laws of thermodynamics. This ensures me that I know the prerequisite lessons of the next topic in class.
Absorb the conceptual parts of the topic first. Before diving into the problems itself, try to digest the concepts or theories behind it first. This way, you can understand which information is important and easily think of a solution because you know the problem’s framework. Even when your professor gives you a problem that seems different from your other sample problems, the concepts will still be the same throughout.
Reverse engineer the solution. Reverse engineering is reading and understanding your solution from bottom to top. I do this to make connections while going through the solution. I usually ask myself “‘where did this come from?’, ‘why did this happen?’, or ‘why is the answer like this?’” It allows me to look into the parts that I missed which are usually concepts or theories that I forgot to apply in solving the problem.
Look for key terms or phrases. There are some problems that put in information that may seem unimportant, but actually is really important. Examples such as the phrases constant velocity, constant acceleration, starting from rest, accelerate uniformly, reversible isothermal, adiabatic conditions, isobaric/isochoric compression/expansion, etc., are easy to miss but actually gives you vital information especially when solving a problem.
Try to ask yourself how or why it happened in every step of the solution. You can do this to gauge your mastery of the lesson. If you can answer yourself confidently, then you’ve studied well enough. But, if you can’t or if you feel that it’s not enough, then you better get your pen, paper, and calculator to practice some more.
If you have to draw it, draw it. Some problems need the use of your imagination, and these problems are the ones that get tricky most of the time. It’s easier to draw each of the time frames that are important so you get the sense of what’s going on between these pictures. This way, you’ll know which information you’re missing and which ones are you failing to take into account.
It’s okay to be messy and slow while practicing. Not all of time you can solve in a tumblr-esque manner because, dude, tumblr notes or solutions are soooo pretty to look at, BUT, what’s more important is that you understand each step of the solution and how the answer came to be 8.0658 m/s directed 32° south of west. So it’s okay to have dashes, strikethroughs, and crosses on your scratch paper, as long as you’re learning, a messy solution on a paper you’re not going to submit to your professor is fine.
IF YOU’VE REALLY GOTTEN THE HANG OF SOLVING IT, try to solve a fresh set of problems as fast and accurately as you can. Try to solve as if you’re in an exam. This is also to gauge how well you’re prepared for it, but you need to do this accurately. I repeat, accurately. It doesn’t work if you’ve finished it in less than an hour but all of your answers are wrong.
Rest. If you know that you’ve done a good job, then take your mind off of everything first and let it wander to wherever it wants to wander. You deserve it ✨
28/05/2021
Hello 👋
Today I did the following stuff
Revised Physics
Started Linear algebra
Duolingo (French)
For linear algebra I'm currently watching videos by Sheldon Axler.They are short and to the point☘ Here is the link if anyone wants to check the videos out
I'm very tired today so off to bed.Ba bye and I hope you had a good day today if not,don't give a damn about this world, you are the best 🤗
26/05/2021
Salut 👋
I just finished 30 minutes of French 🇫🇷 in Duolingo.I love the way it sounds 🤭So today I have decided to do the following stuff
Simple Harmonic Motion
Group theory Problems
Mathematics and statistics revision
I'm hungry,I'll go prepare my breakfast now.Ba bye have a wonderful day!
19/05/2021
Heya👋
It is currently 8.50 in the morning and I'm getting ready for a class at 9. I just finished some lessons on Duolingo. I kinda get into a competitive mood when I see my rank on the leaderboard and want to come at the top but I have to remind myself that I have other things to study too. So anyways today I'll be doing the following stuff
1 lesson of organic chemistry (It might take 30 minutes or less)
20 Problems on Group theory (This might take an hour)
Conjugacy classes in Sn and An (This might also take an hour)
I'm trying to work today in the afternoon because I don't want to work in the evening today. I have some catching up to do with my school friends. I haven't spoken to them in some time. I also want to make it a habit to work a little in the afternoon because distractions are so less.
I hope the day treats you well.If It doesn't always know that you are much much more than a bad day.
Have a Happy Day!!
18/05/2021
Hello 👋
It is currently 6.40 in the morning and I just finished doing my duolingo lessons.(I am learning French and about to complete check point one.If you know any good movies in French do let me know,I'm struggling to find some good stuff lol).
Today I want to complete the following stuff
Revise yesterday's work and do Group Theory(Important actions and applications)
Solve 10 Problems on Group Theory
Complete revising last week's maths and start revising last week's stats.
I wish a very wonderful day to you ❣ Happy, restful and productive! Don't overdo anything, health always comes first!!
Image credits: Pinterest