Recent content by albuser

Great, that’s what I needed to hear. Thanks!

I’m still in the process of applying, but I’m hoping to attend one of the top ten places in condensed matter, particularly MIT, Stanford, or UIUC. I’m domestic if that’s relevant.

That’s what I’m leaning towards, but I’m anxious about starting grad school without a strong background in many body techniques, considering I’ll be competing with lots of students with similar backgrounds for a limited number of research positions. Thanks for your input!

I did (he’s actually the one teaching many body physics), and he gave me a lot of factors to consider, saying it’s ultimately up to me but that as long as I feel prepared for the course it would probably be worth taking. I’m still conflicted about it and hoping for some additional perspectives.

I'll (hopefully) be starting a PhD program in hard condensed matter theory in fall 2018, and need to decide which courses to take this spring. I'm currently in the first semester of graduate quantum mechanics and would like to take the second semester (which covers relativistic qm, second...

Anyone hear back from SLAC yet?

Don't worry, I haven't heard back from them yet either. Hopefully that just means they're still making their final decisions before they release them.

Not that it's at all likely to be relevant this year, but in 2015 did you hear back from SLAC on March 3rd or March 6th? By the way, I'm sorry to hear about your application being disqualified for such a mundane reason. I really thought they were exaggerating when they said that PII would void...

Like Sammy said, when the voltage and current are in phase the average power will typically be much greater than zero, but the average of V and I are both zero, so we must come up with a way to find the power dissipated without using just the averages of V and I. Imagine two sine functions each...

It's true that the average of V would be zero because the integral of v(t) from 0 to T is zero, but when you square the function and take the average of it it's no longer zero. Draw out v(t) and v(t)^2 and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks, that helps a lot.

I'm about to enter college as an Electrical Engineering student, but I am considering changing my major to physics. Before I commit, however, I would like to take an advanced physics course (QM, Classical Mechanics II, Thermodynamics, etc.) so that I can get a feel for the mathematical rigor of...

So why not simply take the partial derivatives of g at that point, find the general partial derivatives of f for any x and y and set the two equal to each other?

Regardless of the equation of P, the point at which the plane tangent to f is parallel to P will be where the x and y partial derivatives of f are equal to those of g at the point (1,2,-6), right?