Recent content by CrysPhys

Refer back to my Reply #12.

But so far the responses you have received are along the lines of, "The path you are pursuing will not get you to your desired destination."

By a physics graduate program, do you mean a master's or a PhD (or both)? After you finish your graduate program, what is your goal? You said you don't plan to work in industry, so are you planning for a job in academia or government research lab? Or are you independently wealthy and do not...

The whole point of a Plan B is to serve as a backup in case your primary plan does not work out, for whatever reason. You will find that there are many circumstances not under your control. And life will get even more complicated should you later on have a spouse and children.

<<Emphasis added>> Another consideration is which major would serve as a better Plan B should you not enter a grad physics program. In your country (assuming you plan to stay there for a job eventually), what are the job opportunities for electrical engineers vs nuclear engineers?

<<Emphasis added>> Yes, you need physics if you wish to understand how and why a device works. But for some engineers, that is not needed. They only need to understand when to select a particular device for a particular application: power requirements, input/output characteristics, size...

<<Emphasis added.>> Note: OP's own words. OP: These, including your own words, sum it up. As I, and others, have posted in previous similar threads: The goal is not to meet the minimum requirements needed to get admitted to a physics grad program; the goal is to attain a strong enough...

Yes. And I'd like to point out that Venn diagrams are particularly effective for communicating with non-mathematical audiences. At one time, I needed to make presentations to business executives (backgrounds were in business, finance, and project management). Venn diagrams they could readily...

:H Brings back bad memories from many decades ago. Set theory was the pivotal theme for the "new math" in the US, foisted on innocent students by the SMSG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Mathematics_Study_Group). I escaped the new math in elementary school for arithmetic, but it overtook...

And then there are some who would say, "Errr ... pen and paper? What are those?"

The OP is even more confused about what they're after. They stated that they want to pursue math and physics to satisfy their own intellectual curiosity, that they do not plan to make a career in those fields. But then they say, "Why should I bother learning all this stuff if a computer can...

True. But the OP needs to sort out in their own head whether they want to learn and understand math properly, or whether they are content with entering input to a computer and receiving the output the computer spits out.

You are contradicting yourself. Do you wish to pursue a subject matter purely for intellectual curiosity, self-satisfaction, and pleasure ... or not? If I wish to write poetry, compose music, take photographs, or whatever for fun, the creative processes are ends in themselves. Even though I...

But why should you care? You led off by stating that you don't intend to pursue math and physics as a career, but to satisfy your own intellectual curiosity: So you can still fulfill your goal by learning via traditional methods: It'll take you many, many years of self-study (if ever)...

OK. I understand you better now. But only the OP can tell us whether they will be happy if they have the opportunity to learn a variety of "new things" in the course of completing a single thesis; or whether they insist on the freedom to pursue any random topic of interest to them. The OP...