Recent content by atwood

I've had, and am still having, similar thoughts. I guess the force that still keeps me going is the thought that you don't have to be smartest to make a difference. That is, I'm still being troubled by the fact that I'm not the smartest or even close. But then again, not many people are...

I've seen the definition that an outer Lebesgue measure is defined as m_n^* (A) = \inf \left\{ \sum_{k=1}^{\infty} l(I_k) \, \left| \, A \subset \bigcup_{k=1}^{\infty} I_k \right} where Ik are n-dimensional intervals and l(Ik) is the geometric length. It is not actually clear to me if A has...

Right, of course. I should never ask anything when tired. Thanks!

Homework Statement A two dimensional space has a metric tensor field g=dq^1 \otimes dq^1 + 2 dq^1 \otimes dq^2 + 2dq^2 \otimes dq^1 + 3dq^2 \otimes dq^2. With the help of g, find the covariant components of the contravariant vector field \textbf{v}=3\partial _1 -4\partial _2 The...

The problem was that, when compared to those who are considerably better than me, one could say that I'm not actually good at all. The problem was that I feel like my efforts are meaningless, because I have worked my butt off to get the same results those brilliant guys could in a blink of an...

I guess mainly because there's much more carpenting or life-saving to be done than research in my area of science. Theoretical physics is saturated with capable people, so what gives me any justification go bothering them? It's a matter of (well-foundedly) low self-esteem, probably. And on...

This goes for me, too. I guess some part of me want's to be hammered down. That way it would be easier to give up, believing that I wasn't any good at it anyway. I don't want prestige and influence, but to somehow justify my existence (as a physicist). I don't want to be great because of...

In the thread Are physicists/mathematicians dumb? Howers wrote: I'm in my third year of theoretical physics, and what motivates me is that I want to take part in the evolution of scientific knowledge of mankind. But what constantly troubles me is that it's the people Howers described who...

Homework Statement A massless spring (spring constant k) is attached to the ceiling. It is free to move only in the y-direction. A homogenous bar of mass m and length l is attached from its other end to the lower end of the spring, and the bar is free to move on the xy-plane. A fancy...