Recent content by lawlieto

That makes a lot of sense! Thank you. Thanks for the clarification!

Consider a multi-electron atom. (In our course we deal with alkalis mostly so that we have energy levels which are similar to the hydrogenic ones with quantum defect. I don't know if that is relevant here) Edit: l = orbital angular momentum of a single electron, L = total orbital angular...

Yes, I have issues with problem solving, but I thought it's because I don't have a good enough understanding of physics. For "strategy", I just read the problem, try to imagine it, write down the variables of the problem and then try to look for some formulae I could use.

Yeah I know that and I don't want to be on the very top, I just want to be better than what I am and it demotivates me to see how slow I am. Unfortunately success is measured by that, because most of our degree is awarded for the exams we sit. Nobody cares how hard I work if I don't get good...

So for instance, some of us were working on a problem where we had to determine the deflection angle of a beam of atoms going through a non-uniform magnetic field (Stern Gerlach). The temperature of the beam was given, the length of the magnets and the magnetic field gradient. I kind of assumed...

Yes that's kind of the case. I'm worried that I work in the "wrong way" and I'm inefficient in my studies. I'd like to know how to be more efficient, i.e. maximise my understanding of physics to effort put in ratio. Due to my inefficiency I'm losing motivation.

This will be a semi-rant about my miseries at life but mostly I'm looking for some useful advice. If you read this and write some useful comments I'll be very grateful. Guys, I'm so desperate to be better at physics but I feel like I keep failing. My story: I did A levels in the UK (it's like...

Thanks for your reply, so it's just a matter of how you define it? But then you could define anything to be anything?

I started learning quantum, and I got a bit confused about inner and dot products. I've attached 2 screenshots; 1 from Wikipedia and 1 from an MIT pdf I found online. Wikipedia says that a.Dot(b) when they're complex would be the sum of aibi where b is the complex conjugate. The PDF from MIT...

Clearly to you, you haven't done classical mechanics and based on your posts you haven't done much linear algebra either. Believe me I'm not interested in classical mechanics either, but to do quantum properly you have to start from the beginning, and go through the steps. Of course there will...

I agree. I was really interested in quantum, and knew a lot of maths, but I simply couldn't understand it properly because I had no knowledge in classical physics. So I decided to study physics at university, I've completed my first year (lot of mechanics, EM, more maths) and even though I...

I've been reading about the photoelectric effect, and something got me thinking. If the frequency of light shone onto the metal is below the threshold frequency, no electrons are liberated from the surface of the metal, since electrons absorb quanta of energy, so if that light is shone for a...

I'd like to be a quantum physicist in the future, so I'd like to do quantum properly, but there are so many books out there, and it's a bit hard to choose. I've already completed 1 year of undergraduate physics, so I think I know enough classical mechanics. I've also covered calculus...

Thank you for your reply, so I definitely have to improve on my understanding of maths, it's just that I'm not absolutely sure where the "borderline" is. I'll definitely watch the video after my exams next week.

I'm currently doing my undergraduate physics course at university, and I'm quite confident I'd like to be a theorist in the future. We have separate maths lectures from maths students, and most people have an attitude towards maths which could be summed up as "only learn what you need to know...