Recent content by WCL

I cannot comment on the other schools, but NC State is a fine, classic, school for undergraduate physics. I'm not entirely sure who is saying the classes are at a lower level; they seem to be quite standard, comparing with my personal experience and the literature, teaching from the standard...

So, like the title says, how optional are the GRE Subject tests? Many engineering and interdisciplinary fields such as materials science state "optional" GRE subject tests, but I wonder how optional they actually are. What weight is usually put onto tests? What if the scores are mediocre...

atyy, I like the mit lectures; they seem to be what I'm looking for. The notes don't seem bad...I'll certainly look at the relevant chapters. Though the book seems much too advanced for what I'm looking for. George Jones, the book seems to be great! Are there solutions to the problems anywhere?

I'm looking for a good review of Waves before I go into E-Mag, acoustics and vibrations stuff. What would be a solid book for that? I feel like I didn't have a strong foundation in analysing trigonometric functions, and a very weak base using Fourier series, especially with applications...

Thank you very much! :D

Ah...I should have looked at what I wrote and figured that the first part made no sense. It should just be P = P_\textrm{atm} + \rho g H For the second case, I think I understand. The pressure fluid in the tube above the level of the fluid in the beaker has to equal atmospheric pressure in...

For the first case, it should be a simple P = P_\textrm{atm} + \rho g H \pi R^2 , right? For the second case, I would just basically add the weight of the column of fluid and distribute the force over the bottom of the beaker, right? Similar to how a hydraulic press works? So I'd have P =...

I'm having trouble deriving the barometric equation using the force balance. Say, for the simplest case with a tube of mercury inverted in the middle of a beaker full of mercury. For the sake of simplicity, both are cylinders, with the beaker having radius R, tube having radius r and height...

Well, does your CC have 3 semesters of introductory Physics? I'm in a quarter based school, and my oscillations are second quarter, but gravity was definitely necessary.

I see...so I shouldn't worry too much about it, huh? If I do continue, what can I do to strengthen my application? Anything I could do on my own? Also, how much does taking graduate level courses or larger amounts of mathematics courses augment the application?

Well, I had always thought that it's nicer to have multiple degrees and stuff to get into grad school, but the more I lurk around here, the more I see people recommending additional mathematics courses and in-depth physics courses beyond the normal curriculum. Currently, I think I'll be...

Hey guys! So like the title says, I'm really not sure what I want to do after college. Right now, I'm a freshman in college, majoring in chemical engineering. However, I'm also planning to double major with physics. I picked these two majors because they seem the most open ended so I could...