Recent content by Christopher314

Do you think any kind of world-changing inventions -- a la the steam engine and the industrial revolution -- would come from room-temperature superconductivity? I think I saw the same Kaku interview you're talking about, and he mentioned the concept in regards to hovercrafts. But besides...

Thanks a lot, qbert. The so-called (or badly deemed) "conundrum" is solved. It's all due to those Arctangent trig relations. I guess instead of my vector calc book, I should have dug out my high school trig book from the garage!

This is a little bit of cheating since I was also a double major in math, but my math courses in Topology, Differential Geometry, and Group/Ring Theory were not only a lot of fun but had a ton of applications to condensed matter, especially topology (i.e. topological derivation of flux...

I think your initial teacher may have confused you with his "derivation": Lagrange's equations are entirely equivalent to Newton's -- you can't really derive one without use of the other (see Marion & Thornton, 4th ed, pg. 258). On the topic of the Hamiltonian, it is based on 'Hamilton's...

Oh man! I just called her on the phone and we laughed for about TWO minutes. I don't know how I didn't notice it! This has actually racked my brain -- I thought I was integrating wrong and even got out my old vector calculus book from the garage. Sometimes you need a new pair of eyes to see the...

Electrostatic conundrum: How "brute force" and symmetry arg. give different answers! Hello everyone, this is my first post -- and an interesting one (or so I think). **Note to Mods: this is NOT me asking for a solution to a HW type problem -- I know and have the solution already -- rather...