- #1
Poop-Loops
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- 1
This question has been on my mind for a while now, and I don't want to bug any of my professors in case they give me something to do.
I know what an experimentalist does. Devise some experiment, build it, take data, analyze data. Either your experiment gives evidence for something or shows that it just doesn't happen (say a new particle being detected under XYZ circumstances). Unless you get an "inconclusive" as a result, but that's irrelevant to my point.
So it's all pretty straight forward. If people start bugging you about your work, you show them where you are at in the experiment, where you hope to be in the future, etc.
But I can't think of what a theorist does. I can't imagine it's something like "Oh I'm in the process of solving this equation but it will take me another month." or the like. I can see people finding new ways to solve really hard equations (i.e. using Perturbation Theory or something like that), but partial results probably don't get you anywhere, so you can't just say "I tried it, it failed.", like an experimentalist would. Could you?
This goes for mathematicians, too. I know math is something different, but similar in the research I suspect. And grad students? How do they help a professor in their research?
Sorry if this is a stupid question. :(
I know what an experimentalist does. Devise some experiment, build it, take data, analyze data. Either your experiment gives evidence for something or shows that it just doesn't happen (say a new particle being detected under XYZ circumstances). Unless you get an "inconclusive" as a result, but that's irrelevant to my point.
So it's all pretty straight forward. If people start bugging you about your work, you show them where you are at in the experiment, where you hope to be in the future, etc.
But I can't think of what a theorist does. I can't imagine it's something like "Oh I'm in the process of solving this equation but it will take me another month." or the like. I can see people finding new ways to solve really hard equations (i.e. using Perturbation Theory or something like that), but partial results probably don't get you anywhere, so you can't just say "I tried it, it failed.", like an experimentalist would. Could you?
This goes for mathematicians, too. I know math is something different, but similar in the research I suspect. And grad students? How do they help a professor in their research?
Sorry if this is a stupid question. :(