Recent content by imastud

What sort of things does someone who works at a lab as an "accelerator operator" do. Obviously the name speaks for itself but I was looking more a more specific description.

it depends on what physics class you are taking. schaum's outlines is usually a good resource, although there are some clunkers.

yeah i was definatley going to try the quals. I'm really just trying to find resources to help study for it. its true i can look at the old quals given out, but it doesn't do me much good to write up solutions and not know if its right or not. it seems to me that studying old quals with...

I don't know if this is common, but at the graduate school I am enrolling in starting in the fall they give all incoming grad students a "free shot" at the qualifier. Is it common for students that come into actually pass it (or parts of it) straight out of undergrad? Also, does anyone know of...

wow that's the first time I've heard that reasoning used to choose a school and the first time I've heard someone laud wisconsin's winters as being good for anything except for snowball fights or other winter sport activites.

ou is actually one of the leaders in supernova research, even if its in the middle of nowhere

easy on the name dropping dude

yeah i know what it feels like to make dumb mistakes and have them cost you grades. the key really is to study hard enough so that you know all the problems cold so you only lose 5-10 points in dumb algebra mistakes. also, i know i do much worse in general on my mid-semester tests because they...

talk about why you are applying there, what your research interests are. basically answer the question, "why should we invest our time,money, and resources in you over all the other qualified candidates?"

feynman only learned Portuguese so he could pick up chicks in brazil

i think what physicist was referring too was the "why" question philosophers ask, like "why is the speed of light ~ 3*10^8 m/s?" or "why does the universe exist?" and other questions that can't be answered using science or any other method of human rationale that has been used before...

i think it has more to do with the fact that they don't want the students to get bogged down with computations. its not hard to go from 1 dimension to 3 dimensions or pointlike mass to ridgid body, but the problems become much more computationally-intensive and that takes time away from...

yeah you should enjoy your intro beer pong class while it lasts because if your a science major the advanced classes will be way too much of a time commitment to take as electives. they require 5-6 night a week commitments and if you are doing A level work in them it probably means that not...

thats definitley true. especially once you start research you never really know what sort of math you're going to need because you're doing stuff no one's ever done before so the bigger your "mathematical toolbox" is the more potential you have to be successful with your theories.

yeah its kinda sad how the allure of string theory is sucking the greatest minds of the past few generations away from doing stuff that's actually beneficial to the world