Recent content by wbclark

Where are you from? I lived in Durham and now I'm an undergrad at Chapel Hill.

Like Quasar, I really feel torn between math and physics. I'm trying to get a BS in both, but I really don't know what I want to end up doing in grad school. I've read however that graduate students are often allowed to take courses in other departments and that there is even such a think as a...

I know one of the professors at the Duke center for geometry and theoretical physics, Ronen Plesser, and he is a very intelligent man with a wonderful gift for explanation.

Apples, out of curiosity here, where do you live? What universities are nearby? Hell, even community colleges?

no one's doubting that. we're simply saying that he has a number of very unfortunate and out of his control factors working against him here; self studying (no teacher) BC calculus without a decent trig background and C physics without a decent calc background will not be easy at all. It's...

At most universities, chem is required of physics majors and can be placed out of (either 1 or 2 semesters, depending on your score) with AP credit. However, this is not the case with many physics classes... here, there are two physics sequences offered. Non-majors have the option of taking...

I'm going to be honest, to really learn E&M the right way, you NEED multivariate calculus (AB is calc 1, BC is calc 2, multivariate is calc 3) under your belt, so there's really not a whole lot of benefit to taking the C E+M exam. Any my university for instance, they don't even give AP credit...

Let us first look at the characteristic equation of the ODE. P(\lambda) = \lambda^2 + 2\lamda + 5 = 0 (\lambda + 1)^2 = -4 \lambda + 1 = \pm2i \lambda = -1 \pm2i Your roots appear to be correct.

Well, I have not studied this a whole lot, but I'll see if I can try to explain. This isn't at all necessary to help you get the correct answer, but if you understand this, you will have a much better understanding of the forces at play here, I think. Again, if you feel like this is too much...

It is only to correct to multiply probabilities if you're trying to find the probability of ALL of these things happen. In other words, if you needed to draw first the pair 1 5, then 2 4, then 2 5, etc. However, the condition is that ONE of these combinations is drawn in ONE trial, so you add...

You're correct but you seem to be bent on making this too difficult =P. P(A intersect B) = P(A) * P(B) = 0.4 * 0.5 = 0.2 I know you probably get this all the time, but drawing pictures for these things really does help. Or even just visualizing a Venn Diagram for these events in your head...

Ahhh, ok. I would probably just point out that the functions are linearly dependent because one can be written as a linear combination of the other. Let f(x) = 0 Let y(x) = sin(pi*x) f(x) = 0 = 0 * sin(pi*x) = 0 * g(x) Since f(x) is written here as a constant times g(x), you have linearly...

It really depends on what type of class this is for. Is this a linear algebra class?

Hello jlucas134, Are you familiar at all with tensor analysis? It may simplify this discussion considerably.

Any set that contains the 0 vector is linearly dependent. In this case, the zero function is the zero vector of the space of functions defined on [o,infinity). This is because any vector written as a linear combination of linearly independent vectors should have a unique linear combination...