Recent content by dighn

Appreciate the replies everyone. I'm much less confused now. Thanks again! Ryker: good to know that the honours option isn't completely out of the picture.

Interesting stuff. I do look at the weekly APS updates and see some pretty interesting research in there. I suppose my question is twofold. One is that is physics really relevant in biology. It appears so, but I've also seen remarks that it is biology without biology. I guess it is a grey area...

Thanks for your comments. That's what I'm thinking, it's good to have different perspectives. Though, what's stopping me from taking more physics courses when studying biochemistry? It seems like "biochemistry" and "biophysics", in the general area of interest I'm mainly concerned with, are just...

That's my feeling as well. Life science is such a broad and complex topic that surely physics can offer unique insights to compliment the biochemical perspective. I'm personally leaning towards biophysics, but I just wanted to see if there's some glaringly obvious reason that I really should...

How relevant is "biophysics" in biology? I'm making a decision between studying biochemistry at school A, or biophysics at school B. School A is bigger and more well known, especially for its life sciences, while only school B offers me the option of studying biophysics. This is undergraduate...

Well said, and regret is a terrible thing to have. IMO engineering is a relatively safe bet because the career prospects are good. 27 here and getting ready to go back to school myself.

Aside from the solar panel and other supporting parts, most of that falls into electrical/computer engineering, primarily digital electronics, i.e. the topic that deals with logical gates, combinational/sequential circuits, microprocessors etc. The questions you are asking span many topics...

Also I don't think you need to integrate U' to obtain U, because U' and U" is really all you need to find the x for which U is at minimum (KE at maximum).

That's true, though even if Etot is large enough such that a solution exists for x=2, that's still not the right answer because U(x) is not at the minimum for x=2. A easy way to get U'(x) might be to consider Etot = K(x') + U(x), then get delE/delx = U'(x) = 0

just sum up the power dissipations from a to b, for resistors use I^2*R, for voltage sources use I*V and pay attention to the sign of of the source (a drop in the direction of I is +V, gain -V).

That approach looks correct. What you got to do now is to figure out Etot which can be determined from the givens (just plug in x, and x'). Then with the equilibrium x, Etot, solve for x' to get the answer. actually you should check the values of x for U' = 0 because they may be maximas as well...

Thanks for the response. Good point that I should drop the term "nanotechnology" because it is very hyped. The research at the school I'm looking at is mostly in MEMS, biomedical devices and nano-scale electronics (carbon tubes/quantum dots whatnot). I am more interested in the former areas. I...

I graduated 5 years ago in Computer Engineering (branch of EE at my school, much in common) and have been working as a software engineer. It's mostly enjoyable/tolerable but I just don't find it intellectually stimulating and satisfying enough, and I don't see a career in this field advancing...

Yeah there is certainly risks involved. BTW I'm not considering graduate school in physics right now, even though I love it and planned to be a physicist before undergrad. For reasons I won't go into, I went into Comp Eng and am working as a software engineer instead for various reasons (this...

Yeah thanks PF :) Seriously though, reading some of the other posts put me into perspective. What I'm thinking of doing isn't that risky. Still young, no family responsibilities etc.