Recent content by serllus reuel

I took the calc and physics AP exams in 9th grade, but I took the actual classes later in high school (although I already knew it). There's also other sciences, chem and bio, plus AP stats, so it isn't that bad. Combined with extracurriculars, I think I have a decent shot at ivies or...

Ritzycat, I've passed both AP physics C exams with 5s a few years ago as a freshman. Most of the stuff I'm doing now is 3rd-4th year college or graduate material. I feel like I am at a disadvantage compared with applicants who have done courses at community colleges, etc, because if you look...

Choppy, thank you for your advice. I understand what you mean, but I am not sure how familiar you are with the undergraduate admissions system in the United States and perhaps there is some misunderstanding. Admission to college is based on not only grades and test scores, but also essays and...

Hello all, I am a high school senior applying to college this year and have a question. Like many others on these forums, I have done a lot of self-studying of physics in my spare time, purely out of interest. How should I include self-study on a college application, and for for those you who...

What is usually "calc 3", is split between the second half of the third quarter and the fourth quarter of calculus at your school, according to what you posted. calculus 3 = multivariable = partial derivatives, multiple integrals, and vector analysis. Since you're a math major you'll have to...

It really depends. Doing easy problems can be a waste of time, but so can spending hours on a problem that you can't solve. Problems should be challenging but solvable. What book are you using? Something like Serway or Halliday?

I highly recommend "Computational Physics" by Mark Newman. It is an introduction to python designed for physics students https://www.amazon.com/dp/1480145513/?tag=pfamazon01-20 The first five chapters are available for free on the author's website...

Having taken both, I can say that discrete math is much more abstract and proof heavy. Lin alg is more applicable to physics, while discrete is more related to CS.

Sadly, QM is much more plain once you really start learning it. The book I'm reading right now, Griffiths (considered to be the easiest QM text out there), is full of integrals and calculations. All of the philosophical "mysteries", discussions, schroedinger's cat, etc are in the first chapter...

From my personal experience, a *** problem in a book like Halliday or Serway is equivalent to a ** problem in KK/Purcell/Morin. I know of at least one problem (finding B due to a rotating charged sphere) to be exactly the same, but *** in Serway and ** in Purcell. The ** problems in the...

I get the idea that infinite sets can have the same cardinality even if they are of different "sizes", and that is part of my confusion, because I recall that sort of reasoning being employed successfully in other proofs, although probably I am misinterpreting it. For example, Cantor's...

Here is what I have come up with. It seems pretty sound to me, but I have little experience in pure math and want to be sure. (I know the easiest way is to show that R is not countable, Q is, so the irrationals, R-Q, is not, but I was wondering about this proof.) Consider the following...

Is it acceptable to work backwards in a "show this" problem? In problems that ask you to "show" something (e.g. "show that the formula/equation for ____ is _____") , it it sufficient to simply justify the answer they give (working backwards to literally "show it"), or should one derive the...

I totally agree with bcrowell in that most of the books you mentioned are nearly identical. The list given by Phizkid is good, although only Kleppner and French are at an intro level. For E&M I highly recommend Electricity and Magnetism by Purcell (especially the 3rd edition revised by David...

no problem! I might add: depending on how comfortable you are with multivariable, you don't have to use a triple integral; just find the field of a ring, sum into a washer, sum the washers into a shell. The spherical coordinates are just a way of thinking, no need to get formal about it