Recent content by alan2

That’s a 3 year BSc curriculum. In Germany students have had 13 years of education and they’ve already learned calculus and the equivalent of something like Halliday and Resnick. The material is basically the same in most countries, the structure of the educational system is different.

The envelope will decay to 10% of its max when the exponential term is equal to 0.1. Then just take the natural log and solve for t.

Guess you spoke too soon, see his response above. He obviously wasn’t being asked to solve for x, it can’t be done analytically, don’t know why you would think that was the question. Of course it has everything to do with an ODE, it’s the solution to a second order equation with damping.

I would still like to know the statement of the problem.

What is your objective? What is your major? One year of calculus is not preparation for analysis.

What is your question? What you have is the solution to a second order ordinary differential equation with initial conditions. What are you trying to solve?

I have no idea where you are getting your figures. Nobody graduates with a BS and a 6 figure debt. In fact, students from crummy schools, almost across the board, have higher debt than students from good schools that give institutional aid and they, on average, experience significantly higher...

I understand that’s the point. He’s found out that a BS in physics doesn’t get you a job. That’s why I told him to get his MSE. He’ll likely have a job before he graduates.

One student doesn’t mean much. There is great disparity in mid-career salaries which are highly correlated with perceived reputation of school. The more important point is that net cost is usually lower at a higher quality school because they operate on institutional aid, not federal aid. In...

Always go to the best school that will have you. The education is likely comparable, the lifetime benefits are not.

What is your purpose in learning calculus? That makes a big difference.

I think you guys are giving him bad advice. He has a bachelors in physics. That won’t get him a job. If he wanted a job after undergrad he should have studied engineering in the first place.

I forget which book this is from but I’ve seen it and it’s a horribly worded question. They are not asking for the increase in the length of a day after 20 centuries, they are asking for the sum of the increases in day length per century for 20 years. So their answer is...

Sad. I tried to upload my notes for 2nd order linear homogeneous equations but it says the file is too large. Maybe you can pm me and I can email it?

Go to grad school. If your objective is to get a job you should think about an engineering masters. I know a lot of people who did that with a BS in physics. They had to catch up a little but it was fairly easy for most of them.