Recent content by jowens1988

This seems to be pretty common. It depends on your research adviser, though. There are some professors at my school who give their students a month off every year and don't expect them to be at school more than 40-50 hours, most weeks. You still may be required to do a bit of work from home...

You should start by thinking about what you wany to get out of the club. Would you prefer it to be a casual thing, where people with interest in physics can meet up and hang out? Maybe a place to form study groups and discuss future class planning. Perhaps you could pick research papers and have...

I am not sure if classes like those are exceptional amongst those appying to MIT. But what's the rush? You will have plenty of time to take Linear Algebra and Analysis when you get to college. I cannot imagine that you would benefit too much from taking these classes at a community college...

I guess it all boils down to what topic you're really trying to address. If you're trying to discuss why there are complex numbers in quantum mechanics, in a more philosophical sense, then I don't think I can provide much insight. From a conceptually mathematical point of view, the article you...

I agree with uman; the mathematics involved in GPS is going to be much simpler than that used in quantum mechanics. First, I would say that, if your science and math teachers are anything like mine were, they probably don't know a thing about quantum mechanics, and therefore will not be able to...

I agree. If we're talking about math needed to prepare for a quantum mechanics course, I would brush up on my differential equations and linear algebra. I really cannot imagine that it would be too helpful to learn about spherical harmonics before you see them in quantum mechanics; I never...

In what context is he wanting you to learn them? Are we talking about in the context of the angular portion of the solution to the three dimensional Schrodinger equation? If that's the case, I think Griffith covers it pretty well in his Quantum Mechanics text. I think the article on...

I concur with fss. You shouldn't be spending so much time in the lab that it is dropping your grades in any noticeable way. Balancing the two shouldn't be too difficult, you will just have to shave off a little free time. If you are considering becoming some sort of experimentalist, or just...

It seems to me that you have your schedule pretty well planned, already. Honestly, it is up to you to figure out how much studying you need to do for each class; chemistry will almost certainly require more time than history or your labs. That being said, I hope the following tips will help...

I am finishing up my bachelor's degree in math at UT-Austin in May, so perhaps I can provide some insight. While it's true that UT-Austin has the reputation of being a party school, that has a lot to do with its size. Think about it: you group 50000 people together, and a lot of parties are...

From what I can tell, quantum computing is still in its early stages. As of now, a scalable quantum computer has not been built. A lot of research is focused on quantum information systems. That is, extracting information about the state of quantum systems, and using that data to perform...

Thanks for getting back to me. That's what I ended up doing, and I think it worked out. I suppose the ignore order K on the sheet may have been a mistake...otherwise, it seems the problem reduces too much. If I did want to go about it the same way Compton did, was I on the right track, though?

Homework Statement Compton's derivation of his scattering formula: \delta \lambda \equiv \lambda' - \lambda = \frac{hc}{m_e c^2} (1 - cos\theta) assumed that that the target electrons were at rest. In reality, they are orbiting around nuclei. In a material like lead, the electrons have a...

Okay, that's right. I re-worked the algebra, and I can find such a β. So, the moral of the story is that even if two events aren't causally related, they CAN still be simultaneous?

Homework Statement The space and time coordinates for pairs of events are (ct,x,y)1 = (0.3,0.5,0.6) meters and (ct,x,y)2 = (0.4,0.7,0.9) meters. Could there be a causal connection between these two events? Is there a frame in which the two events would be recorded as simultaneous? If so...