What's on Your Fall 2010 Science Schedule?

[Theorem.]

I'm starting as a Physics freshman this fall in University of Crete, Greece.

English I - Pretty basic grammar and vocabulary. English for academic purposes.

Physics I - We'll cover all Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Waves parts of Serway's book, "Physics for Scientists and Engineers".

Modern Physics Topics I - It is just an intro subject to familiarize with the research programs of the University. In the end of the term i should prepare a project (like an essay) about a topic of my own interest.

Math I - Using 1st and 2nd book of THOMAS Calculus. It's basically what I've done in high school but in a more advanced level.

Math for Physicists I - Complex Numbers, Intro to Possibilities, Intro to Linear Algebra

Plus one more subject which is basically an intro to UNIX and several programs that will come in handy the years to come.

So, what do you think? I think it's a pretty common first term.

It seems pretty standard but still a good semester. I really liked Thomas calculus. I found it to be very helpful.

 

[malicx]

http://www.schedulizer.com/KDL1Ra

I still don't know, I may want to switch Dynamical Systems with either enumerative combinatorics or mathematical logic i.

 

[l'Hôpital]

http://www.schedulizer.com/KDL1Ra

I still don't know, I may want to switch Dynamical Systems with either enumerative combinatorics or mathematical logic i.

Should just swap it for Analysis. Then we'd have almost identical schedules. o.o;; If Richter is as good as the book he wrote, I'd be wary about Logic.

 

[Char. Limit]

My schedule as a college freshman:

World Civilizations I - As WSU says, "Integrated study in social, political, and philosophical/religious systems in early civilizations." It's a GER...

Multivariable Calculus - Well, you can figure out what's covered here. We're using Chapters 10.6-13.9 of Stewart's "Essential Calculus (Early Transcendentals)". If someone could tell me what to expect of the textbook, it would be useful.

Chemistry 191 - This is just like Konst's Modern Physics Topics I class, but for Chemistry.

The United States Army - Role of the Army in contemporary society. Taken because I might go ROTC to help pay for college.
Physics 201 w/ Lab - Calculus-based physics; topics in motion and dynamics of particles and rigid bodies, vibrations, wave phenomena, and the laws of thermodynamics.

What do you think?

 

[malicx]

Should just swap it for Analysis. Then we'd have almost identical schedules. o.o;; If Richter is as good as the book he wrote, I'd be wary about Logic.

I'll be taking analysis next year, plus I'm afraid of Conn. I have heard mixed things and rumors about richter... Like how he purposefully left errors in that book, so I really don't know haha.

 

[l'Hôpital]

I'll be taking analysis next year, plus I'm afraid of Conn. I have heard mixed things and rumors about richter... Like how he purposefully left errors in that book, so I really don't know haha.

Haha, I'll let you know how it goes with Conn. Ratemyprofessor seem to hate on him pretty badly, but I'm all for it. Bring it! I'm really curious on who might do Algebra. It was rumored that it would be Messing and that seemed to scare a bunch of Graduate Students. I had joked around with one of the graduate that I wanted both my Analysis and Algebra class to be insanely hard so that I would get destroyed and the moment he heard about Messing (possibly) teaching, the class, he just came up to me and said "Algebra!"

As for Richter, let me know. I doubt I'll ever take anything with him, but I'm curious to know if he's better than what his book makes him seem. It's not like the only bad thing was the errors, it was just terrible altogether.

 

[Dillio]

I am entering my final year at my university. I am going to attain a Physics Degree, Math/Science Education Degree, and a minor in Mathematics. Behold...my final semester before student teaching.

PHYS 302 - Lab Atomic

PHYS 350 - Classical Mechanics I

PHYS 480 - Quantum Mechanics

PHYS 498 - Senior Seminar for Physics

SMED 340 - Perspectives in Science/Math Education

SMED 470 - Project Based Instruction in Science/Math Education

 

[drkatzin]

Entering my junior year in a double major, (1) physics (2) math w/ cs

8.05 Quantum Physics II (formalism)
8.13 Experimental Physics I (Junior Lab)
18.404 Theory of Computation
18.101 Analysis and Manifolds
21M.423 Conducting and Score Reading :)
21M.421 Symphony Orchestra

 

[thrill3rnit3]

^ mit?

 

[drkatzin]

yup :D. you too?

 

[thrill3rnit3]

Nah, still in high school :rofl:

What textbook are you guys using for 18.101? Spivak's?

 

[eXorikos]

Entering my junior year in a double major, (1) physics (2) math w/ cs

8.05 Quantum Physics II (formalism)
8.13 Experimental Physics I (Junior Lab)
18.404 Theory of Computation
18.101 Analysis and Manifolds
21M.423 Conducting and Score Reading :)
21M.421 Symphony Orchestra

Why the music courses? :s

 

[drkatzin]

nope, we're going to use munkres. although we have done a combo munkres & spivak in the past

@eXorikos humanities concentration (requisite for graduation), doing mine in music. although may try to expand it into a minor

 

[╔(σ_σ)╝]

COE 538 Microprocessor Systems
ELE 504 Electronic Circuits II
ELE 531 Electromagnetics
ELE 532 Signals and Systems I
MTH 514 Probability and Stochastic Processes

AND
One of

MTH 710 Fourier Analysis
or
MTH 525 Analysis I

Depending on which one is open ( hopefully Analysis is , Fourier would make Digital signal processing next year a repeat.)

 

[ben23]

mechanics (junior)
e & m (junior)
experimental physics I (of IV)
astrophysics
chicano studies (G.E.)

 

[Char. Limit]

My schedule as a college freshman:

World Civilizations I - As WSU says, "Integrated study in social, political, and philosophical/religious systems in early civilizations." It's a GER...

Multivariable Calculus - Well, you can figure out what's covered here. We're using Chapters 10.6-13.9 of Stewart's "Essential Calculus (Early Transcendentals)". If someone could tell me what to expect of the textbook, it would be useful.

Chemistry 191 - This is just like Konst's Modern Physics Topics I class, but for Chemistry.

The United States Army - Role of the Army in contemporary society. Taken because I might go ROTC to help pay for college.
Physics 201 w/ Lab - Calculus-based physics; topics in motion and dynamics of particles and rigid bodies, vibrations, wave phenomena, and the laws of thermodynamics.

What do you think?

Actually, I'd also like to know... has anyone here ever gone to Washington State University? If so, is this a good starting freshman schedule?

I'm somewhat worried, so help would be appreciated.

 

[Hobold]

Probably because the terms "hour", "unit", and "credit" mean the same thing - it depends on the regional dialect.

A 3-unit class typically means 3 hours of lecture a week. For work outside of class, a general rule of thumb is 2 to 4 hours of outside study for every hour of lecture (that can vary widely of course).

So if someone says that their class load is "12 hours", that means ~12 hours of lecture + ~36 hours of study = ~48 hours of work, per week.

Which is exactly the same here. I have (this semester) 27 hours per week (credits) plus laboratory work (scientific initiation, mostly, which adds up 20 hours) and still there's outside studying.

Plus, I'm not sure if it's a general rule, but I've watched MIT/Yale/Stanford online courses and they seem to be weaker and a lot less deeper than most of my classes, so I have to ask it, because despite those universities are considered to be three of the best universities in the world, their program seems very weak.

 

[iratern]

Which is exactly the same here. I have (this semester) 27 hours per week (credits) plus laboratory work (scientific initiation, mostly, which adds up 20 hours) and still there's outside studying.

Well, I lived in Turkey for 6 years and my dad did his undergrad in mech eng there. He says that he graduated with almost 200 credits , which is a lot compared to north american standards. But apparently they give out much less homework and the instruction is much less concept based. I must agree to, here in high school I have many more assignments than in Turkey and (even though they are easy) It would take an averge student here longer to finish them than in Turkey. I think it would be similar in Brazil as well since Turkey and Brazil seem to be similar developing countries.

Plus, I'm not sure if it's a general rule, but I've watched MIT/Yale/Stanford online courses and they seem to be weaker and a lot less deeper than most of my classes, so I have to ask it, because despite those universities are considered to be three of the best universities in the world, their program seems very weak.

Well most of the video lectures they offer are for freshman classes (well MIT at least I don't know about the others). Here in North America most freshmen years are equivalent to the last year of high school elsewhere (Europe in particular). So the classes here are at a lower level in general. But MIT doesn't have video lectures of it's advanced freshmen courses. And believe me some of them are quite intense (ever studied Apostol's calculus? take a look at it). Anyways the point is you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I have a friend in MIT, he just finished his freshmen year, and he took analysis based on Rudin! (He is an IMO gold medalist) so the courses vary greatly according to there audience.

(Pardon if I wrote bad, I'm in a hurry and I didn't check :D)

 

[Hobold]

Yeah, I suppose they must have a stronger program somehow. I studied Spivak's Calculus (which seems to be very similar to Apostol's from what I've seen) last semester, by the way.

My entire course has roughly 260 credits in its basic curriculum and way over 350 credits if you count labs and optional disciplines.

The first (and sometimes second and third as well) semester is also a recapitulation of most High School's contents that will be useful to the desired course. USA High School has something we don't: Calculus (I have studied Calculus in High School for Olympiads, but it's not taught in school).

Another thing that I've heard from one of my professors is that our regular course (Bachelor's) is equivalent (in content) to most European Master's programs (specially Portugal's). And this problem is quite annoying, as most students receive a research interchange from well-known European Universities, such as INSAs, École Polytechnique, University of Berlim, and sometimes get into a lot of bureaucracy because our program is different.

I can't really say that you have to study three hours per class hour because I am still a freshmen, but I did notice an increasing of difficult from High School to University and I wasn't really used to study too much. Still I hear a lot of scary stuff of how the course gets harder.

Also, the amount of credits I said is not a particular characteristic of my University, but from most Brazilian Universities, that's why I found the low amount of credits on most alien colleges to be weird.

 

[iratern]

Yeah, I suppose they must have a stronger program somehow. I studied Spivak's Calculus (which seems to be very similar to Apostol's from what I've seen) last semester, by the way.

My entire course has roughly 260 credits in its basic curriculum and way over 350 credits if you count labs and optional disciplines.

The first (and sometimes second and third as well) semester is also a recapitulation of most High School's contents that will be useful to the desired course. USA High School has something we don't: Calculus (I have studied Calculus in High School for Olympiads, but it's not taught in school).

Another thing that I've heard from one of my professors is that our regular course (Bachelor's) is equivalent (in content) to most European Master's programs (specially Portugal's). And this problem is quite annoying, as most students receive a research interchange from well-known European Universities, such as INSAs, École Polytechnique, University of Berlim, and sometimes get into a lot of bureaucracy because our program is different.

I can't really say that you have to study three hours per class hour because I am still a freshmen, but I did notice an increasing of difficult from High School to University and I wasn't really used to study too much. Still I hear a lot of scary stuff of how the course gets harder.

Also, the amount of credits I said is not a particular characteristic of my University, but from most Brazilian Universities, that's why I found the low amount of credits on most alien colleges to be weird.
T 02:08 AM

Hmm, yes I see you're point. I guess that's it's a developing country thing: the amount of class hours you have. How does this affect a student's ability to absorb the material? I find this quite interesting actually. (Well for the gifted it doesn't make a much a difference, they always manage to keep up).

Anyways I'm going to take Spivak's based calc this year (My freshmen year at the University of Toronto). So we do have comparable courses here, but it is generally slower. So how is it in Brazil I'm curious now!

 

[Hobold]

Well, the regular Calculus textbooks for most engineering courses are usually Stewart's, Thomas' and a few other Brazilian authors, such as Guidorizzi (which is the closest to Spivak's book). There's a Advanced Mathematical Program in my University which selects a small group of 7-10 students in the whole University to enter and deeply study Calculus, Analysis and Linear Algebra. I was in this program last semester and we used Spivak's for Calculus. Well, I quit because the program taught really deep and pure mathematics and I want something more engineering applicable.

I can't really tell you if it's hard to absorb the material because, as I said, I'm still a freshman. All I can say is that there's a significant difference from High School (in my senior year I had a combined score of 9.7/10 and in the first semester in Uni I got a 7.4/10 studying way more than I did back in High School).

Also, High School is a lot different here. The regular course includes Mathematics, Portuguese, English, Spanish, Writing, Literature, History, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Sports and Philosophy during the whole three usual years of High School divided into 20-25 hours a week, depending on the school (as you see, our High School does not split disciplines like Biology into Anatomy, Botanic, Histology, Immunology, etc, but you still go through all that during High School). I can't really say this system is good, as it gets pretty easy, despite the unusual amount of content, though I've heard from some study-a-broad students that it is quite solid.

Also, the best High Schools are usually private (there are some absurdly good free public schools such as Military and Application Schools [held by a federal Univesity]). Opposing that reality, best Universities are usually public and are completely free (which includes Federal and State Universities).

 

[Ryker]

Hmm, yes I see you're point. I guess that's it's a developing country thing: the amount of class hours you have.

I don't think it is, to be honest. I think you will find this to be true of wherever outside North America (and possibly Australia) you go. Granted, I don't know the ins and outs of all of the European countries' systems, and especially not the rest of the world's, but I live in the EU and have also gone on an exchange to Belgium, and from what I gathered is if you actually attend classes you'd be hard-pressed to find a university or course where you'd have less weekly hours than what Hobold is mentioning. For example, my first undergraduate degree was in Law, and we had around 30 hours of lectures easily. Some friends that studied Biochemistry and Pharmacy told me that combined with labs they had an even tougher schedule. And this really does strike me as peculiar, because I don't have the feeling the US and Canada lack in the department of great university undergrads (there is a whole lot of outstanding ones, it seems, especially judging by the fact that there is a lot of prominent scientists winning Nobel prizes schooled there). And I guess I'll find in a month or so how that ties up together, but it's just something I never could really figure out, because the load really does seem quite easy at first glance (!) compared to European universities *knock on wood*. Hopefully those words won't haunt me someday :) Your point about more homework and such might be a fair explanation, though, and, well, there has to be something there I (and others like Hobold) am not seeing when just looking at the number of hours one spends in class and labs in North America.

 

[iratern]

Ryker, considering what you said I decided to do a quick check and yes apparently only N. America has such little class hours. In Turkey it used to be aprx 40 now it's closer to the 30's. In some Russian institutions (Moscow Institute of Physics and Tech) there are 48 hours of class!+ hw! Here in Canada almost everyone complains about the workload if it has more than 25 hrs per week.

Well I think it can boil down to the "liberal arts education" mentality they have here. I think the extracurricular activities are the balancing factor. Since student's tend to do them according to their interests. eg. pure science majors would do research for profs, engineer majors would join design teams etc.

Also here only the really good institutions are really world class (by top I mean first 100 or so). The rest are relaxed. And since the best go to the top it may create a sort of balancing factor. I mean all over the world who wouldn't want to go to MIT Harvard Stanford etc? I wanted, didn't happen though but still, they do attract the best.

Actually I think someone should research this, and try to find the strengths of the different methods, and their effectiveness.

 

[robotsonmars]

Fall 2010 (prospective Physics major, if I don't chicken out)

PHYS 1116 Mechanics & Special Relativity (Honors)
MATH 1920 Multivariable Calculus for Engineers
ASTRO 2211 Stars, Galaxies And Cosmology
JWST 1101 Elementary Modern Hebrew I
ANTHR 3255 Ancient Mexico and Central America

Each is four credits, so twenty credits in total.

 

[Zorba]

Complex Analysis I
Equations of Mathematical Physics I (Fourier series, ODEs, field stuff (stokes/green) etc.)
Analysis in several real variables
Advanced Classical Mechanics I (Mr. Lagrange)
Thermodynamics
Optics
Oscillations
Current Electricity
Physics Labs

Looking forward to going back (apart from the optics which is guaranteed to be ghey), not too long now.

 

[hawkingfan]

Linear Algebra
Multivariable Calculus
Physics I (Newtonian Mechanics and Classical Thermodynamics)
Organic Chemistry I
Literature and Criticism

 

[cnidocyte]

Organic chem,
Spectroscopy & physical chem,
Biochemistry,
Organic chem lab,
Interpretation of lab data

 

[RedAnsar]

CHEM 2150 General and Inorganic Chemistry (Honors)
PHYS 1112 Mechanics (I rather have this than 2207..., the weak calc-based Physics course)
KOREA 1101 Elementary Korean I
ENGL 1111 Writing Across Cultures

Fall 2010 (prospective Physics major, if I don't chicken out)

PHYS 1116 Mechanics & Special Relativity (Honors)
MATH 1920 Multivariable Calculus for Engineers
ASTRO 2211 Stars, Galaxies And Cosmology
JWST 1101 Elementary Modern Hebrew I
ANTHR 3255 Ancient Mexico and Central America

Each is four credits, so twenty credits in total.

Hey, we both go to the same school
but I'm a prospective Chemistry major

How come you don't have an FWS? Or is your FWS ANTHR 3255?

 

[geophys90]

optics
Quantum 1
E & M 1
Signal Processing

 

[murmillo]

fall of junior year

Modern Algebra I
Topics in Geometry (this year: differential geometry)
American West (history course)
Introduction to Economics

 

[y0tsubato]

If all goes well during the summer sessions (precalc I and II), it will be:

Calculus I
Physics I
C++

Things did not go as planned-I had to go back and correct some major deficiencies

The new schedule:
Precalculus I
Beginning Japanese
C++

This will definitely be easier on me since I still have a full time job--and for the Japanese, it will be fun to revisit after 20 years!

 

[sEsposito]

Wasn't going to play -- but what the hell...

1. Intro to Number Theory
2. Theories in Mathematics (this is like an intro to mathematical thinking; or so I'm told.)
3. Logic I
4. Italian I
5. Theology I (dreading this like no other.. But it has to be done.)

 

[widderjoos]

Junior year!

CM
E&M
Electronics w/ Lab
ODEs & PDEs
QM (if I get permission) or graduate topology

How do some of you guys take more than 7 classes? That's insane

 

[capandbells]

PHYS 311 Classical Mechanics I
PHYS 411 Thermodynamics
MATH 440 Vector Analysis
MATH 411 Linear Algebra

4 hours each, for a total of 16. I'm also auditing a Chinese class, but that doesn't count. :p

 

[clope023]

way it looks like

electronics + lab
digital logic
complex analysis
engineering probability and statistics

thinking of taking feedback/control theory as well but I've tried 5 classes before and it didn't turn out well