Expert Advice: Essential Physics Topics for Undergraduate Students

[ShayanJ]

There is a forum designed for students which I'm a member in.
It has scientific parts along with entertaining parts.
Recently,I became the mentor(Guess you call it like that)of the physics part.
One of my responsibilities is placing instructive articles for people there,mostly undergraduates(anyway,I'm an undergraduate too)and mostly people form physics(again like me)
Well,I've done well till now,but now,I lack subjects.
Could you suggests things that are essential for physics undergraduate students to know and can't be found(or at least are hard to find them)in textbooks?
You know,Its not so helpful for them(and satisfying for me)to write something they can find in books.
Thanks

 

[jedishrfu]

maybe if you provide a list of what you've collected so far then others can fill it in.

 

[ShayanJ]

Twin paradox
Gauss's theorem
Proving differential form of maxwell's equations
Proving electromagnetic wave equations in a vacuum
Kronecker delta
Dirac delta function
Levi-civita symbol
Introduction to tensors(General)
Why special relativity doesn't deny conservation of linear momentum

 

[ShayanJ]

These are the things I've written for helping on formal education(which is what I mean here)
Other things from more advanced subjects are there too(well,they're just explanations because as I said I'm an undergraduate too)

 

[chiro]

Hey Shyan.

One thing as a suggestion you might want to focus on, is talking about the some of the stuff that is non-technical that can't be found in a book. Regardless of the career, field, or endeavor, this is something that is highly valuable.

Examples might be specific things to do with labs, looking for work after graduating (BS,MS,PhD), networking issues, writing papers and associated guidelines, and so on.

These things IMO, are going to be not only the hardest things to find in books, but also the most valuable. Not surprisingly enough, these form a lot of the questions that are asked in these forums as a result of new graduates who are entering a new phase of their life wondering what the hell to do, and the worries are not technical ones in this related capacity.

The technical stuff is going to be found somewhere and specialists have organized ways of distributing information, getting together, and figuring out to communicate with one another (again regardless of the field or endeavor whether its motorbike riding or neurosurgery), so the non-technical stuff might be something to look into.

 

[ShayanJ]

Thanks chiro, you're right
But as I said,I myself am an undergraduate student and don't know much about things you mentioned,Although you know some good source I can gain information from,about those subjects
thanks

 

[Andre]

Here is an idea that I'm tinkering with.

Infra red light cannot penetrate water more than some microns. Hence it cannot heat up the water very effectively. Instead one would expect a higher evaporation rate (think ocean scale) of the agitated molecules.

However it is argued sometimes that increased infrared radiation can heat the ocean, not directly but indirectly by reducing cooling. Due to the evaporation, the surface boundary layer of the water is slightly cooler, hence slightly denser and hence it has a tendency to sink, cooling the layers below.

Now if the infra red radiation hitting the surface of the water, molecules will be more agitated (warmer), this surface boundary layer would stay warmer and would not sink so much anymore. The layers below would cool less.

But with increased agitated surface molecules, one would also expect more evaporation, especially in windy turbulent conditions, as is normal on the ocean.

The question is, what is prevailent if more infrared energy hits the oceans, would the cooling in the daily cycle be less or would the evaporation be more?

So can we imitate the ocean in the lab?

Maybe have two containers on scales, containing warm water of the same temperature, have one container radiated by a strong infrared source and note the rate of cooling for both water containers at the bottom and the rate of evaporation (weight loss) at regular intervals.

Do various tests with a fan blowing at different rates and stirring the water or not, obviously the same for both containers.

Calculate where the additional energy of the IR source going, keeping the container warmer than the check-container or increasing the evaporation.

I'm very curious about the result.

 

[ShayanJ]

That's very interesting Andre,Thanks
But I didn't say I'm the instructor of a lab!

 

[jedishrfu]

You could research the alcubiere warp drive solution as a topic on relativity. It would get others thinking about relativity in general.