Recent content by arunma

Yeah, I applied to jobs in parallel with grad school applications and realized no one is looking for a "physicist." However I did get an interview with Target for an engineering position. You might also try your luck with data science. Most hiring managers for these positions prefer PhDs, but...

For what it's worth... I spent an extra semester in college to finish my second major in math. Four months after graduating I decided to go to grad school in physics, but before this I had been trying my luck applying to jobs. I must say the it was my math degree that got my foot in the door...

Hi SpaceNerdz. You asked for personal anecdotes, so I've got one. The usual route for a tenured professor is: undergrad->grad school (PhD)->postdoc->maybe another postdoc-> assistant professor->tenure. Of course most people jump off this bandwagon at some point or another. I just completed...

…wait, people actually buy furniture?? I keep forgetting that not everyone is an impoverished grad student. Now I really can't wait to have a Real Job(™) next month!

Hi Evo, I'm glad you're still around! How's life these days?

Hi all, it's been awhile since I've been to PF. I just got an automated email from this place imploring me to come back, and I remembered all the good times I've had here in the past. A lot has happened in the past couple years (or however long it's been since I was gone). I've done a lot...

I'm a fourth year in particle astrophysics. Definitely not in any position to be giving career advice, but I can tell you what I would do if I was back in first year. I agree with cgk, stay away from astro and particle. I don't know what gravity physics is, but stay away from that too. If I...

Fair enough. I admit I know next to nothing about El Salvador. But speaking from a US perspective, I think that a lot of people here overreact to the religious fundamentalists' threats to science. Oh yes, there are certain issues like stem cell research on which a policy-maker's religious...

Alex, don't you think you're overreacting by a few orders of magnitude? I'll certainly agree that the people who said these things are ignorant and probably foolish. But persecutors? "Persecution" is a strong word. It implies imprisonments, house arrests, and maybe even a bit of torture. A...

Heh, for a second I read this as "I wanted to know how to quit the physics PhD program." If anyone can tell me how to do that without feeling really, really bad, let me know. I guess Twofish is right, it's sort of like a priesthood, except only for a smaller fraction of your life. :smile: I...

So I wonder if the kid ended up becoming a physicist. ...oh wait, he'd still only be 17. Necromancer threads are always fun though.

Well it looks like others have beat me to doing the math. I'd recommend using a denser ball if possible. That will make the approximations of the kinematic equations more accurate; basically it'll minimize air resistance.

Maybe at one point this was true. But I think that Conservapedia irreversibly pissed off the fundamentalist Christians when they decided to rewrite the Bible to make it less liberal. Even the fundamentalist Christians are aware of how logically wrong this is.

I think this is correct. From what I know by talking to lawyer friends, freedom of religion doesn't allow you to just make up a religion, and expect everyone else to tolerate your funny religious requirements. And there are other limits. For example, as had been alluded to, Native Americans...

Heh, no problem...if you can wait two to three years. Actually, I'm sure other people in particle astrophysics have done stuff on this topic already. A quick search for "Lorentz Invariance" on ArXiv will likely turn up some interesting stuff.