Recent content by Norman

Things haven't changed much for me in the last 4 years of document prep with LaTeX. What OS environment are you in? For windows - TeXnicCenter (with miktex) is my go to. In a linux environment - I always like Kile. Both have nice options, good layout, and easy installation.

Having been gone from PF for a while, seeing this high heel thread felt like deja vu (all over again :smile:). I could swear I had seen this discussion before on here so I did a little digging: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=357515&highlight=high+heels The cycles of PF...

I come back and visit PF after a long hiatus and what do my eyes behold... Bill K has the right of it currently. Just some background on this program is worth mentioning. The funding for this work was originally (and still is) through a creative & innovative projects funding which...

I don't know either of their departments very well, but I grew up near Lawrence University - actually just North of it. Lawrence has a reputation for a strong arts program. As you already know, it is a very small school with a very small physics department. It is not necessarily well known in...

Physics Forums was mentioned in the article about the German students attempts to find a closed form solution to the air resistance problem. I am not sure if Alan Boyle is a member around here since I have been MIA for a very long time on PF. Check it out...

Alangne, Assuming you are only looking at projectile fragmentation, have you compared your data with that of Zeitlin et al., who also looked at 290 MeV/n Carbon on 6 different targets? http://prc.aps.org/abstract/PRC/v76/i1/e014911 If you look at the paper, while their analysis was fairly...

This is spot on. Though I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about the lowered level of mathematical preparedness the average incoming freshman has. All my data is anecdotal and through a very skewed lens (my own, since I don't think comparing a large body of students to a...

Izabella Laba has an interesting article up about the rigors of being a professor: The state of the profession. I think it should be required reading for every graduate student thinking about an academic career path. The article is interesting in that it ponders the feasibility of...

At the 2011 Space Weather Workshop last April a review talk was given on the power grid and it was stated in the talk that there are typically 4 transformers per station (don't know if station is the correct term here, but let's go with it). Only 3 of the transformers are required, this allows...

Your picture is for a solar eclipse - so it is over simplifying the situation and exaggerating the size of the lunar shadow on Earth. If memory serves, the shadow is less than 1% of the surface area of the Earth. In addition, CMEs travel along the magnetic field lines, not along line of...

For a 2 -> 2 process (like you talked about above) the spectral (or equivalently the angular) differential cross section is not lorentz invariant. But for other types of interactions, for instance the A + B -> C + X where A, B, C are defined particles and X is any other combination of...

It is typically easier to do cross section calculations in the CM frame. You just then do a lorentz transformation to the Lab frame. Or you use a lorentz invariant form of the differential cross section.

Depends on what you need for the project, I suppose. Just to be clear, however, for the numbers I gave originally, the salary range for the given parameters was 47-76k. As a postdoc in physics, I fall in that range with full benefits (my current position, however, is a little more atypical)...

As a rough estimate, including fringe and overhead, a research scientist in physics will cost you approximately 100K-120K. There is usually like 28-38% overhead from the institution, then 10K - 15K worth of fringe, the rest is salary. These are just rough numbers. Hope they help. Also, this...

Do you know what kind of overhead you are looking at? Do you just need salary? PhD or masters in what? Physics? If it is physics, you can look at the AIP statistics page for salaries: http://www.aip.org/statistics/ If you are looking for total cost (salary plus fringe and institutional...