Reading Definition and 614 Threads

How to read and understand successfully a physics book in any branch of physics ?

Hi, Im in my final undergraduate year of a physics major. I need to prepare a short presentation for "The mass of a photon" in my theoretical physics class. I do not do particle physics at a high level, so I don't have much experience in this field. Can anyone recommend me a source or key...

Hello, I have an assignment that centers around the Rankine cycle and requires me to find the enthalpy of water entering the boiler. My professor has told me to take the enthalpy value at boiler conditions for a saturated liquid. I'm not really sure why I should make this assumption as I was...

Homework Statement Homework Equations 1/R= 1/R1 + 1/R2 +... I1= R2/R1 x I The Attempt at a Solution I chose B because I thought that since total resistance in the branch of variable resistor has increased, the branch with ammeter will get a greater share of current. Since I'm not too sure...

I've just completed my degree in maths and physics and am going for a maths masters the following year. Am I likely to loose any sharpness in this time? Without really knowing what modules I'll be doing and even if I did, each lecturer seems to approach a specification/ prioritise certain bits...

Dear Physics Forum advisers, I am a college sophomore in US with a major in mathematics and an aspiring mathematician in the computational complexity theory. I have been reading some math books on different topics, such as analysis and abstract algebra. As a former microbiology major, it is...

Dear All, Please, I am trying to read in a data shown in array form but no luck. The data is 10 by 10 with each 10 by 10 depicted by a local array, for e.g. 0 0 0 0 0 0. A sample of the code I tried using is as shown below and the data is as attached. Please, any help or suggestion will be...

Why is the reading on my D.C. ammeter fluctuating? As in the needle won't maintain at one spot, it'll sway left and right. Also, how do i ensure that the fluctuations are minimized?

Questions for all the professors on this site: Have you ever been approached by an undergrad for a research position who has already read at least a few of your published works and has a very basic understanding of their contents? How does this student look in your eyes? Does it creep you out...

This question is for the scientists and academics out there. What books on the scientific disciplines do you wish Science Fiction writers would read? I can think of books written by people like Brian Epstein and Michio Kaku. Another source would be textbooks. Anyone out there have any thoughts...

I want to read cosmology articles.Is there any paper archive site ? I know arXiv but Is there another sources which I can read new papers (dailly or weekly updated ) ? And Is there any site which include only cosmological paper (It s not so important for me but I want to ask it again ) What's...

Hi, Do any of you ever experience this: You are trying to learn somhing in a book (physics, math, chemistry) and the book does not explain it sufficiently. You then go to google and start searching for a better explanation. After searching for 5 minutes you finally find a okay explanation...

I have been trying to read in a data using Fortran but for some reasons, it doesn't read the data correctly. Please, any help will be appreciated. To read the data, I used the following (Note, for the attached data, Nm=1, nw-nu=5, nw=10). The array data(i,j,m,n) is declared as...

Member warned about posting questions of substandard quality (no effort shown and image upside down). 1. At which points are velocity and acceleration the greatest?2. Please check the attachment to see the graph.3. I tried to solve it but i couldn't get to any conclusion.

Greg Bernhardt submitted a new PF Insights post Physics Blogs You Need to Be Reading Continue reading the Original PF Insights Post.

Could someone tell me what exactly is an open reading frame.(ORF) What i know about it is that it starts its sequence with ATG, codes for amino acids and ends with a terminator codon, what does that mean? is it like an mRNA(can't be as it has ##T##) or part of the DNA which will form the...

Dear Physics Forum friends, I am a college sophomore in US with double majors in mathematics and microbiology. My algorithmic biology research got me passionate about the number theory and analysis, and I have been pursuing a mathematics major starting on this Spring semester. I have been...

I'm Referencing: Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory - 4th Edition by Reitz Here's where I'm struggling: Then take a look @ this crude diagram of a circuit I've drawn. A voltmeter probe marked P (red) is moving along the circuit (red arrow), while the black probe remains stationary...

Hi guys, I have read a lot about car's MAP sensor and it's function but there are some areas that are not completely understood yet! Let me put it this way: My car's MAP sensor reads 337 mbar (millibar) @ idle (800 RPM). When i open the throttle, the reading DROPS (for example at 2500 RPM it...

Hey guys ! Its my first post here which is about my biggest problem. I read too slow to understand concepts. I am 16 year old and just now it took me 2 hours to read vectors and introduction to derivatives (7 pages with a few piece of cake questions). I am preparing for IIT-JEE and with this...

Hey all, I was writing this program just now and wondered whether it would be easier for the cpu if I stored a number before I divided it by 2 or if i multiplied by 2 later to get that number back, I know it won't affect speed at all really but was just wondering, Any help appreciated.

My apologies for starting a thread on a seemingly easy and searchable topic. But, alas, I've searched here, Amazon, google, Goodreads etc and wanted to get some recommendations. Specifically book suggestions on The Sun and / or Stellar evolution. I've ran across several intriguing textbooks...

Normally I have very good reading comprehension, but when I try to read mathematical statements I'm finding that even though I know what they mean it feels like they don't register fully. When you read math, do you read it to yourself translated into plain English? Or is there another way...

Homework Statement How do I read in a file line by line into an array without using arraylist? Homework Equations NoneThe Attempt at a Solution I know how to do this using BufferedReader, but I am wondering how to do this using Scanner? When I used BufferedReader I noticed that there must...

Homework Statement Homework Equations None required? The Attempt at a Solution I understand that Id would be a disordered phase, Io an ordered phase and the other two are regions where 2 phases exist at the same time possible due to cholestrol. I am assuming so means solid ordered. But...

Most probably, there was already a thread about this before, but I didn't find any with the search engine. Please, believe me, I tried a lot of words and found nothing like I'm going to ask now. I'm not a physicist...in fact, I'm a Political Sciences student with a great passion for Philosophy...

In the late 19th early 20th century, sulfuric acid production was a huge deal, and even today, conversion of SO2 to SO3 (contact process) is something that people take great pains to optimize. But I also see references here on physics forums as well as elsewhere which assert that sulfur dioxide...

Homework Statement The voltmeter in the figure below reads 6.2 V. If the vs = 12 V and R1 = 560 Ω, R2 = 470 Ω, R3 = 680 Ω, and R4 = 4.7 kΩ, is the voltmeter reading correct? Homework Equations V*Rx/(Ry+Rx) The Attempt at a Solution So I thought the voltage in the voltmeter would equal the...

Homework Statement Ok, this my not be appropriate topic to post my question but it is related to QM (moderators, feel free to move the thread if needed). I don't have any calculations nor do I have anything interesting to write. I am just trying to learn to read the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients...

I think I have a touch of dyslexia (or the number version of this) and nearly all of my problems in math have occurred because I misread the problem completely. What can I do to ensure that I am indeed seeing what I think I'm seeing?

One of the things that I enjoy and so sometimes do, is reading poems. And as you probably know, Persian literature is rich in that and there are a huge number of really nice Persian poems. But when, from time to time, I try to read English poems, e.g. Shakespeare's, its just hopeless. Because...

I'm preparing for my Foundations of Geometry Course by self-learning topics before the semester starts. I've been reading Geometry: A Comprehensive Course by Dan Pedoe, and it's covered a lot of good topics. Any online resources you recommend?

Hi, I'm a triathlete and a hobby constructor. I would like to build a power meter for my bike because the ones on the market are quiet expensive. The idea is to measure the power the rider puts into pedaling by measuring the tension between the pedal and the crank. They are connected with just...

We can see galaxies/planets light years away determine their composition such such as if they have water et cetera. My question is if light takes billions of years to reach us from there how is that we can determine such things? Is the speed at which a telescope can zoom faster than the speed at...

I was browsing through 4-5 years old threads started by myself, and reading them, just for the sake of it. I can't believe I was that ignorant, and that dumb sometimes. Its embarrassing to read some of the replies I made back then, how could I not get it still? But, I also find some of my...

I have to read a binary file into a byte array and chop it wherever I like. I'd like to use a vector of char to do this. But reading some resources from known people, I find they tend to use char* or char []. Using a vector of chars seems easier for retrieval of any block of bytes. Which means...

The holidays are upon us. With the holiday's comes time off work and school for many. What books are you reading during your spare time? Do you Have any Favorite holiday reads? Perhaps some guilty favorites? Currently I am working on four novels: 1. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene 2. Anna...

I am about to read the book Classical Mechanics by Herbert Goldstein. The prerequisites that it says in the book are advanced calculus and vector analysis. Would that mean multivariable calculus? Also there are a lot of things about transformation matrices and tensors. Would I need to review...

Homework Statement when the balance point is achieved , there're no current passing thru , so Galvanometer should show 0 . Am i right... so there's no current passing thru the 20 ohm resistor . so my working is ( 8.1/120 )(40) = 2.7 V ... correct me if I'm wrong...Homework EquationsThe Attempt...

I need some informative books for a beginner. However, I find most beginner textbooks too simple, vague and incomprehensive. I find it annoying that many texts are extremely vocabulary based, and fail to inform the reader of HOW particular physics mechanisms work. Instead, these texts vaguely...

Obviously, it is important to work lots of problems when learning math and physics. At the same time, it's useless if you haven't learned the material from reading the textbook sections. I can see two extreme approaches to studying out of a textbook. The first is reading the textbook extremely...

Is it a good choice to read these books first or there's a better way. My professor recommended me these books but as I started them they had bulk of maths and really matter was not that understandable on my first try. I am an engineer. I read physics in free time I can get , so shall I go ahead...

One thing I find consistently disturbing about the way printing shows up on web forums is that it's hard to perceive the customary double-space between two sentences.as being much of a physical division. The period is usually a tiny speck, so it doesn't, by itself, do the job of separation...

Homework Statement [/B] Determine the phase of the steam (compress liquid, saturated liquid, saturation mixture, saturated vapor, superheated vapor, or supercritical vapor). Use A-4 Table. T=110 Celsius P=55.732 kPa Homework Equations A-4 Table...

I am a graduate student in physics. One of my biggest frustrations in my education is that I often find that my mathematical background is lacking for the work I do. Sure I can make calculations adequately, well enough to even do well in my courses, but I don't feel like I really understand...

why should Proca eqn be like ∂γ Fγμ + m2 Aμ = 0 but not ∂γ Fμγ + m2 Aμ = 0 ? another doubt is (λ-1 ω λ)μγ = λ-1 ρμ ωρσ λσγ ? why in λ-1 transformation got upper index in the second place but not in the first place? if someone clear my doubts...I would be thanful... regards.. Kau

I am currently reading this paper. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.2670v1.pdf Because I am interested in knot theory and here are my impressions. Why are these papers so difficult to read? It almost seems as if it really is a completely foreign language as if its not already a foreign language to...

I bought a book (Differential Geometry by Kreyszig) based on really good reviews because I'm planning to learn general relativity later. I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the description because apparently it's completely focused on "three-dimensional Euclidean space." Will this book...

I've been thinking about the building-design simulation, and am hoping that someone can point me toward more complete treatises/references, than this hobbyist impression. I'm trying to develop a mathematical outline of simulated deformation physics, with the hope of eventually creating a...

I have the rather fortunate task of reading to completion Eric Poisson's review article on point particle equations of motion in curved spacetime, http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2011-7/ . It's a rather long and very technical review. I've only ever read one review article in...