Recent content by asvani

Witten didn't go to grad school immediately after undergrad. Wasn't he involved in the 1972 presidential elections?

I think getting a sound grounding in thermal physics and quantum physics is pretty important. Kittel is widely used but it is not necessarily the kindest book for introductory solid state physics. "Band Theory and and Electronic Properties of Solids" by John Singleton is pretty good.

If you wish to pursue graduate studies in NTU, why aren't you eligible for NTU research scholarships?

Have you considered the MOE tuition grant scheme?

Vegetarianism is not uncommon in Singapore. There are food outlets which cater to vegetarians. That should be the least of your worries.

The problem with alloys is that it is primarily their disordered structure. Your run-of-mill electronic calculations will not work because they are geared towards nicely ordered repeating structures. As far as I know, for ternary alloys, ordinary DFT is hopeless and there still remains much work...

No. And I say that as a physics graduate student. It just takes practice, lotsa lotsa practice. Afterwhile, with sufficient practice and experience, you internalize the concepts.

To prepare for grad school, it will be nice to learn some complex analysis, abstract algebra (group and representation) and differential geometry (tensor calculus and differential forms) in particular if you want to do theoretical elementary particle physics. Numerical analysis is needed for...

The difficulty of the test really depends on your preparation. You may want to check out past copies of the exam.

Generally, in undergraduate physics, it's better to learn a little mathematics (like multivariable/vector calculus, matrix theory, ODEs and complex calculus) very well than it is to learn a lot of fancy stuff in a shallow and half-baked manner. As with things like programming, speaking a...

Not really. Anyway, for me, the 3rd and 4th years went something like this. Year 3 Quantum Mechanics II (time-independent perturbation theory, hilbert space structure, matrix mechanics, etc) Eletromagnetism II (Maxwell's equations - waveguides, oscillating dipoles, etc) Nuclear and...

Year 1: Physics 1 - Mechanics and Thermodynamics Physics 2 - Electromagnetism and Optics Physics 3 - Modern Physics Mathematical Methods of Physics 1 - Multivariable/Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra and ODE. Calculus C programming Year 2: Quantum Mechanics 1 Electricity and...

I will be going to UIUC. I do wish they pay more - I had to turn down a very generous fellowship from Cornell to go there.

Fields not involving QM: Chaos, hydrodynamics, some statistical physics - stuff in Physical Review E generally. Relativity too, in case I forget.

Books that I used as an undergraduate and found to be pretty good EM: 1) Reitz, Milford and Christy Foundations of Electromagnetism 2) Jackson Classical Electrodynamics 3)Vanderlinde Classical electromagnetic theory QM: 1) Schwabl Quantum Mechanics and Advanced Quantum Mechanics 2) Sakurai...