Is my view of Theoretical physics romanticized?

[Dickfore]

ITT: A person with their complexes.

 

[Phyisab****]

Your humility and erudition are truly great. I wish you much success in all your endeavors.

 

[DrummingAtom]

why the hell should i settle for teaching at no name liberal arts college when people like witten and tao pretty much skip postdoc work and get professorships straight away. Why am i any less talented then them?

As for working in construction, screw that. I am not some dumb ape. Why do i think i am so smart? Short answer is, i don't. Its just i am much smarter than the average person out there who spends their day working in an office or cleaning toilets. People with my drive should be given the chance to extend Human knowledge. Instead the academic system does not recognize true talent when it sees it. What do i have to do to make it to the top? I will do anything...

As for the climbing a mountain analogy... i like it.

Being only a freshman right now I can't say much else but this: if this is the type of person I discover in the Math and Physics fields I will run away and burn all my Math and Physics books.

 

[Vanadium 50]

As for working in construction, screw that. I am not some dumb ape.

Son, it's difficult to believe that you are as smart as you say when you keep writing stupid things.

One of the smartest people I know works construction. He's a steelworker, and builds skyscrapers and bridges. He also was chosen to lead the team to install an irreplaceable silicon detector into the exact center of a major particle detector. Real physicists, you see, recognize talent where they see it,

What do i have to do to make it to the top? I will do anything...

I don't think you will. What you need to do is lose the arrogant attitude, because it will stand in the way of your success. But you show no signs of being willing to do this,

 

[hadsed]

Tao is an anomaly. You're not.

 

[twofish-quant]

why the hell should i settle for teaching at no name liberal arts college when people like witten and tao pretty much skip postdoc work and get professorships straight away. Why am i any less talented then them?

1) Because it's pretty unlikely that you are Witten or Tao. Most people aren't that good. Most physicists aren't that good.

2) Because even if you were, timing is everything. If you are as smart as Witten and Tao, but there are no jobs, then you are stuck anyway. There are dozens of people that are as smart as Witten and Tao, that couldn't get jobs because Witten or Tao got the job.

As for working in construction, screw that. I am not some dumb ape. Why do i think i am so smart? Short answer is, i don't. Its just i am much smarter than the average person out there who spends their day working in an office or cleaning toilets.

By definition 50% of the people in the world are smarter than the average person. Being smarter than average doesn't make you unique. Also being super-smart doesn't guarantee a job. My guess is that among the 6 billion people on this planet, there are about 200 people that can do math at Witten or Tao's level. The problem is that there are 5 jobs. Bummer.

People with my drive should be given the chance to extend Human knowledge. Instead the academic system does not recognize true talent when it sees it. What do i have to do to make it to the top? I will do anything...

You need a lot more humility, since I don't think you are going to get very far in physics unless you fix your attitude.

Also, learn to settle. At some point, you are going to realize that you just won't make it to the top. At that point, you have to make some decisions about what you want to do with your life.

Finally. There is no "top". The tenured professors that I know of work just as hard as they did in high school. Even if you have no other competitors you become your own competitor.

 

[lompocus]

Dear god... having skimmed through the thread, I've come to one conclusion: The education system in the United States is atrocious. I don't mean to poke fun at anyone here, only to point out that many things mentioned here, assumed as givens, are unimaginable where I come from xD (Perhaps this is an anomaly exclusive to California...).

As to the OP, I suggest doing what you can to teach yourself what you want to do. If you can't sit down for a moment with pen/pencil/paper/notepad/compiler on one hand and a book on the other, focus, and truly be in utter, rapt attention, then perhaps whatever it is you've attempted to teach yourself isn't for you. You shouldn't have something (a uni class, with all its bits) "looking over your shoulder", so to speak; there's nothing to be accountable to beside yourself (until you get a job, of course, but that's something else entirely :P).

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned something golden, i.e.: there are many little bumps and irritating parts to any field; getting over those tiny hurdles, however, will reveal tons of fun opportunities. If you're stuck at the hurdles, perhaps some field isn't your thing.

 

[cdotter]

why the hell should i settle for teaching at no name liberal arts college when people like witten and tao pretty much skip postdoc work and get professorships straight away. Why am i any less talented then them?

As for working in construction, screw that. I am not some dumb ape. Why do i think i am so smart? Short answer is, i don't. Its just i am much smarter than the average person out there who spends their day working in an office or cleaning toilets. People with my drive should be given the chance to extend Human knowledge. Instead the academic system does not recognize true talent when it sees it. What do i have to do to make it to the top? I will do anything...

As for the climbing a mountain analogy... i like it.

Because you are in fact less talented then them.

I only bust out the superiority complex to troll people on other message boards. But you sincerely believe you're better than everyone else? This thread is HILARIOUS.

Get ready for the life of a has-been that never was -- a self destructing prophecy just waiting to be fulfilled.

 

[twofish-quant]

Dear god... having skimmed through the thread, I've come to one conclusion: The education system in the United States is atrocious.

Personally I think it's pretty good. If you are born in the US, and you have reasonable amounts of drive and mathematical skill, you can get a physics Ph.D. This is not true for a lot of other countries.

 

[hadsed]

Sure a lot of things in the U.S. are better than other countries because a lot of the rest of the world isn't as good. I'd say being complacent about education would retard progress, which could have profound consequences for [if I can be radical for a moment] human civilization across the world.

 

[Pengwuino]

Dear god... having skimmed through the thread, I've come to one conclusion: The education system in the United States is atrocious. I don't mean to poke fun at anyone here, only to point out that many things mentioned here, assumed as givens, are unimaginable where I come from xD (Perhaps this is an anomaly exclusive to California...).

Your lack of details only further reinforces your point...

 

[lompocus]

Sorry for not being specific. Someone mentioned Calc and linear algebra as requirements to graduate from their high school. Knowing that their school was not the norm (anywhere, apparently), it was, however, still shocking to take this in terribly sharp contrast with my area, where 5%, if even (most likely far less) with ever go through something beyond trig or college algebra stuff. Half of those will care less about math in their university. A large portion of that 5% will fail their AP Calc class, or else not get anything substantial out of it.

(the number is just a bad estimate, and comes from what I've seen in my area :P. In short, education relating to math is the farthest thing from a priority, anywhere, with results manifested in the form of absurd unemployment, gov't budget deficits, etc. Back on track with where this thread was going...)

 

[Dickfore]

This thread is going nowhere fast. For one thing, it should be locked by the mods and the op should be smacked around a bit with a large trout.

 

[Pengwuino]

Sorry for not being specific. Someone mentioned Calc and linear algebra as requirements to graduate from their high school. Knowing that their school was not the norm (anywhere, apparently), it was, however, still shocking to take this in terribly sharp contrast with my area, where 5%, if even (most likely far less) with ever go through something beyond trig or college algebra stuff. Half of those will care less about math in their university. A large portion of that 5% will fail their AP Calc class, or else not get anything substantial out of it.

Yah that is more typical of american education. Calculus being a requirement to graduate is something I've actually never even heard of around here, let alone linear algebra (although some people confuse the simple little algebra everyone goes through with the linear algebra, matrices, all that fun stuff)

 

[Kevin_Axion]

I said introduction to linear algebra and calculus, not Gram-Schmidt Process, Orthonormal bases, eigenvectors and the like. And I go to a typical high-school, it's a Catholic based institution so it has a slight academic advantage.

 

[lompocus]

Even then, I wish all catholic schools were of uniform quality; can you ship ours some of your old school's? :D...

 

[Kevin_Axion]

Don't worry about it, just learn stuff on your own and University will be more academic and engaging.

 

[Philosopher_k]

I would just like to apologise for the things i have said. I by no means mean to justify my actions as i acted out of frustration/sadness/hate.

I have long dreamed of being a mathematician/theoretical physicist. I was willing to devote my life to a subject that i loved. Learning about black holes string theory, branes, cosmology and particle physics. I then come on here, expressing my dream, only to be told that the chances of reaching my goals are close to nill. This pisses me off. I love physics and yet i am told that i may never make it to a decent school or even become a professor!

I used to dream of being the next einstein, revolutionizing 21st century physics. I was so stupid i actually thought it was possible. Now i am looking at the possibility of being too stupid to get a phd. I will not match hawking or penrose, I will never prove any famous theorems. So what is the point? I seem to be asking this alot!

The thing is i am so confused and frustrated. I have to decide what to major for college in and then i have no idea what i actually want to do with my life!

Working in industry/finance just does not appeal to me.

I want to be a thinker, but i just seem to get told i can't be. I am told i am lacking in talent and that it is worthless to dream...

well guys give yourself a pat on the back for crushing a kids dreams.

 

[Stan Marsh]

Everyone interested in physics like thinking the origin of the universe and time. But not everyone can solve these problems.

Only the ones who are willing to pay hard labor work and stand complicated and tedious math (though it's fun actually) can make real physicists and reveal the truth of universe. To achieve really cool goals, you have to be ready to suffer stuff that is so not cool. It's the commitment a physicist has.

 

[Philosopher_k]

That is not my problem stan.

I am willing to do the math. But learning and understanding all of modern mathematical physics is another thing.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

The great minds of the 20th century and 21st century didn't decide one day that they would revolutionize physics. Many things occurred with immense amount of work and deduction. It took Einstein approximately 10 years to complete his theory of relativity. Things just happen and if you give up then you'll regret that decision most likely.

 

[Philosopher_k]

Ok assuming i don't quit. If i could do any kind of physics it would be the physics of Hawking/Penrose. I presume this field is Cosmology right (please correct me if i am wrong).

 

[Kevin_Axion]

Yes, it is Cosmology.

 

[Dickfore]

It took Einstein approximately 10 years to complete his theory of relativity. Things just happen and if you give up then you'll regret that decision most likely.

Einstein himself said that he started to think about the problems of Relativity when he had been 16 years old. Since he was born on pi day 1879, it means he started thinking about it in 1895. He published his 'Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies' in the Annus Mirabillis of 1905, so that's 10 years. However, it took him another 8 years after his Special Theory to give the General Theory its final form (1913).

 

[Philosopher_k]

The thing is i do not find mathematics truly beautiful unless i can imagine it in a platonic sense. Not to say any mathematics is non platonic, but what i mean by this is, i would prefer to imagine a hilbert space rather than think of it as a real or complex inner product space that is also a complete metric space with respect to the distance function induced by the inner product. I am more of a geometer than algebraist/number theorist (not that i don't find them interesting). I LOVE TO VISUALISE.
So the question is which field should i go into? Physics because you have to visualise everything in physics or pure geometry? Maybe a mixture?

 

[Kevin_Axion]

No one can decide this for you except yourself. I love Physics because of its simplicity, symmetry, beauty and mystery. I just enjoy knowing something so profound about the Universe.

 

[hitmeoff]

I don't know...but I think a lot of people go into math/physics thinking they are going to be the next Einstein, hoping to solve all the mysteries of the physical world. I don't think its wrong to think you could, I certainly don't think its wrong to work towards that goal.

The question I think a lot of people here are asking you to ponder is: "What if you dont? Will you still be interested in physics/math if at some point you realize that the chances are next to nill?"

Think about a kid growing up playing baseball, always being the best on the team, even in high school, he's the talk of the town. He's so sure he's not only going to be in the major, but he's a future Hall Of Famer. The comes college ball or rookie leagues where the kid suddenly finds himself surrounded by other kids who were always the best and everyone is battling for one of the few coveted spots on a major league roster.

How many of these kids wash out, don't make it past minor league baseball, don't even make it to affiliated ball and have to play in the independent leagues or in leagues in foreign lands for pennies on the dollar. How many will simply quit playing ball and go do something else? How many will continue to pursue the dream of making it to The Show? How many will continue to play knowing they will never be rich or famous, but play because they love the game?

When you consider that there are only about 700 major league roster spots in any given season, but there are several TENS OF THOUSANDS Minor Leaguers, Independant Ball players and probably several hundred thousand high school kids playing varsity ball, you start to get the idea that NO ONE is GUARANTEED a trip to the Show. And consider the fact that of all the players to ever play the game there are so very few Ruths, Mays, Aarons, Mantles, Cobbs, Ryans, Bondss, Pujols'.

The same can be said for scientists. No one ever said you shouldn't hope to accomplish what you want to accomplish, but rather what will you do when reality hits? Will you get up, dust yourself off and continue to pursue your dreams? Or will you just quit academia because you graduated with your PhD from Noname State and can't get a job anywhere except maybe as part-timer at the local CC? Do you love math and physics, or do you just love, as you've stated the "romanticism" of becoming an Einstein?

DO you love physics and math, or do you just love the way the History Channel talks about how brilliant Einstein is, and how famous he is?

 

[hadsed]

Took the words out of my mouth, hitmeoff.

 

[Pengwuino]

I would just like to apologise for the things i have said. I by no means mean to justify my actions as i acted out of frustration/sadness/hate.

I have long dreamed of being a mathematician/theoretical physicist. I was willing to devote my life to a subject that i loved. Learning about black holes string theory, branes, cosmology and particle physics. I then come on here, expressing my dream, only to be told that the chances of reaching my goals are close to nill. This pisses me off. I love physics and yet i am told that i may never make it to a decent school or even become a professor!

I used to dream of being the next einstein, revolutionizing 21st century physics. I was so stupid i actually thought it was possible. Now i am looking at the possibility of being too stupid to get a phd. I will not match hawking or penrose, I will never prove any famous theorems. So what is the point? I seem to be asking this alot!

The thing is i am so confused and frustrated. I have to decide what to major for college in and then i have no idea what i actually want to do with my life!

Working in industry/finance just does not appeal to me.

I want to be a thinker, but i just seem to get told i can't be. I am told i am lacking in talent and that it is worthless to dream...

well guys give yourself a pat on the back for crushing a kids dreams.

Turn off the drama, it is boring. No one said you will never become a professor, no one said you're possibly too stupid to become a phd. No one. People are just giving you a good lesson that you aren't taking to heart. If you live and die based on whether you ace the next exam, ace a class, get into the best university in the world, write the greatest papers of all time, become a professor at Princeton, and win the Nobel Prize, you are going to have a psychotic breakdown most likely or simply fizzle out and become a nobody.

There is middle ground between janitor at Noname state at Nobel Prize winning Caltech Professor. A LOT of middle ground. Just because you can't be the latter doesn't mean you're stuck being the former. If you can't even have a realistic discussion about the reality of the life of a physicist, then you're guaranteeing yourself a life closer to the janitor at NoName State than the Caltech Professor.

 

[Philosopher_k]

Thanks guys i really appreciate the advice.

You know what...maybe i won't work in string theory...so what? There is a whole lot more physics out there. Even if it is less "fundemental". Experimental physics is always an option or maybe a cross between it and theory.

 

[Klockan3]

The thing is i do not find mathematics truly beautiful unless i can imagine it in a platonic sense. Not to say any mathematics is non platonic, but what i mean by this is, i would prefer to imagine a hilbert space rather than think of it as a real or complex inner product space that is also a complete metric space with respect to the distance function induced by the inner product. I am more of a geometer than algebraist/number theorist (not that i don't find them interesting). I LOVE TO VISUALISE.
So the question is which field should i go into? Physics because you have to visualise everything in physics or pure geometry? Maybe a mixture?

You can decide that long after you start studying, just take courses and see how it is.

Also visualizing things is really good, never stop doing that. Many throws their intuition away once they start getting into higher stuff since they realized that it isn't working any longer but I'd say that there is nothing that states that you can't adapt your intuition to fit instead. Intuition is the source to creativity within maths and physics.

 

[twofish-quant]

I have long dreamed of being a mathematician/theoretical physicist. I was willing to devote my life to a subject that i loved. Learning about black holes string theory, branes, cosmology and particle physics. I then come on here, expressing my dream, only to be told that the chances of reaching my goals are close to nill.

The faster you get rid of old unrealistic dreams, the more quickly you can find something that is realistic. If you want to spend the rest of your life figuring out "how the universe works" then that's realistic.

Also don't confuse cosmology with "string theory." Most of the current work in cosmology involves gas dynamics that you can see in a fire place. String theory has as far as I can tell been totally and utterly useless for cosmology. The other thing if you want to study black holes, there are lots and lots of black holes out that are observable.

This pisses me off. I love physics and yet i am told that i may never make it to a decent school or even become a professor!

I don't know if you really love physics. It's not clear to me that you understand enough about what theoretical physics really is in order make a reasoned decision about whether you really like it or not.

I used to dream of being the next einstein, revolutionizing 21st century physics. I was so stupid i actually thought it was possible.

That's just not how physics works. Physics is a slow grinding process, in which you try really hard to make one piece of the puzzle fit with others.

Now i am looking at the possibility of being too stupid to get a phd. I will not match hawking or penrose, I will never prove any famous theorems. So what is the point? I seem to be asking this alot!

That's something that you have to figure out. In fact, it's not hard to discover something new and original about the universe. If after grinding through numbers for years you discover one thing (even if that one thing is that you've been on a dead end for the last decade) that's pretty interesting.

So what *is* the point?

The thing is i am so confused and frustrated. I have to decide what to major for college in and then i have no idea what i actually want to do with my life!

I'm at least twice your age, and I still haven't figured what I what to do with my life.

Working in industry/finance just does not appeal to me.

Since you haven't tried it, I don't know how you can tell.

Also, sometimes you just have to play the cards that you are given. If Harvard rang me up and offered me a tenured faculty position, I'd be zipping out the door. But I don't think that is going to happen. So given what I can get, what's the best I can do that gets me what I want.

I want to be a thinker, but i just seem to get told i can't be. I am told i am lacking in talent and that it is worthless to dream...

If you want to dream about being a research professor, that's great. My dream is to be a starship captain. But personally, I just get annoyed with always dreaming and always thinking. I want to make stuff happen. O.K, I was born a few centuries too early to pilot a starship, but given what's out there, what's the closest thing that I can get.

Well guys give yourself a pat on the back for crushing a kids dreams.

Just telling you what reality is like. Personally, I think that physics is *really* *really* cool, but what you have in your mind, isn't what physics is like at all.

 

[twofish-quant]

Everyone interested in physics like thinking the origin of the universe and time. But not everyone can solve these problems.

I don't like thinking about the origin of the universe and time. Without any data, it's just idle speculation and you can make up anything. I'm more fascinated by things like turbulence and chaos.

 

[twofish-quant]

I am willing to do the math. But learning and understanding all of modern mathematical physics is another thing.

You can't so don't even try.

No one understands all of modern mathematical physics. The best you can do is to have a general grasp of one small part and to work with other people that understand some other small part of the puzzle.

Also the more you know, the more you know that the less you know. I'm a lot more confused about how the universe works now than when I was in high school.

 

[Philosopher_k]

Thanks Two fish Quant.

So is it still worth going into MATHEMATICAL physics if i am interested in the likes of time travel, particle wave duality, time cones, multiple dimensions etc. Or would a double major in Philosophy and physics be better for me? I know oxford has a double major course with specialised content...

Or am i better of sticking to my guns and attempting to go down some alley of Mathematical physics?

 

[Klockan3]

Thanks Two fish Quant.

So is it still worth going into MATHEMATICAL physics if i am interested in the likes of time travel, particle wave duality, time cones, multiple dimensions etc. Or would a double major in Philosophy and physics be better for me? I know oxford has a double major course with specialised content...

Or am i better of sticking to my guns and attempting to go down some alley of Mathematical physics?

Go with mathematical physics, it for sure treats those subjects but it won't be nearly as flashy as the things you read in popsci. But it is the real deal, you will learn the theory behind those wild explanations. It can either be a letdown or an awesome experience depending on how you see it.

 

[twofish-quant]

So is it still worth going into MATHEMATICAL physics if i am interested in the likes of time travel, particle wave duality, time cones, multiple dimensions etc.

Hard to say. One thing that you need to be aware of is that none of the topics that you mentioned are particularly advanced physics or areas of cutting edge research, and all of them are pretty much covered in intro-level graduate courses.

For your average astrophysicist, relativistic time dilation, light cones, and particle wave duality are just things that you see every day...

 

[Pengwuino]

Thanks Two fish Quant.

So is it still worth going into MATHEMATICAL physics if i am interested in the likes of time travel, particle wave duality, time cones, multiple dimensions etc. Or would a double major in Philosophy and physics be better for me? I know oxford has a double major course with specialised content...

Or am i better of sticking to my guns and attempting to go down some alley of Mathematical physics?

Philosophy is useless as a major. Don't even bother wasting your time if you think it'll make any realistic connection with your physics work.

And as twofish said, the last 3 things on your list are pretty much common, boring, everyday concepts to physicists (I know, how can those things be boring?). Time travel on the other hand... time dilation is boring, time travel in the sense of popular science and movies and all that nonsense is just that, nonsense.

That is saying something, though... everything that catches a young persons attention or fascinates the public is stuff that physicists take for granted. Some cosmic rays travel so fast that they can transverse the visible universe in a few minutes? Yah, sure, easy calculation. Seen it, done it. It's like saying to the lay-person "if i hit a nail with a hammer, the nail will go into the wood". It's taken for granted. Physicists simply live in a different world than most people because we've become use to ideas that are beyond the comprehension of some people.

Edit: Not that I mean to say any of those ideas are boring... to me it's something I'm just use to. I guess if you work at a fireworks factory, you might not find yourself blowing off work to see a fireworks show after a while!

 

[Jokerhelper]

I initially came in this thread interested in what the OP had to say since I changed my major from physics after finding out it really wasn't what I thought I expected it to be, so I switched to engineering. However, now all I rather say is that with that kind of attitude, it will be hard for him or her to be successful, regardless of where that person goes on to do in life.

Sorry for not being specific. Someone mentioned Calc and linear algebra as requirements to graduate from their high school. Knowing that their school was not the norm (anywhere, apparently), it was, however, still shocking to take this in terribly sharp contrast with my area, where 5%, if even (most likely far less) with ever go through something beyond trig or college algebra stuff. Half of those will care less about math in their university. A large portion of that 5% will fail their AP Calc class, or else not get anything substantial out of it.

(the number is just a bad estimate, and comes from what I've seen in my area :P. In short, education relating to math is the farthest thing from a priority, anywhere, with results manifested in the form of absurd unemployment, gov't budget deficits, etc. Back on track with where this thread was going...)

The posters you are referring to said they did their high school studies in Toronto and Calgary. Coincidentally, I actually started high school in Toronto and finished in Calgary, and unless things have drastically changed in the last few years, there is no way that calculus or linear algebra are requirements to graduate. If that was the case, then dropout rates would shoot up at least 20% in one year. Here in Calgary you can graduate from high school without taking any sort of grade 12 math. The reason why students take these courses is because those are typically required by Canadian universities to be admitted as an undergrad in engineering/math/physics.

 

[Vanadium 50]

well guys give yourself a pat on the back for crushing a kids dreams.

You see? Given the choice between physics and your attitude, you kept your attitude. This is standing in the way of your progress, yet you won't give it up.

When you want to do physics enough to change your attitude, you have a chance of succeeding. But chanting the mantra "but I am passionate about physics" won't do anything if you won't change.

Experimental physics is always an option

Don't get the idea that experimental physics is any less challenging than theoretical physics, and that it's filled with people who couldn't hack it as theorists.

 

[Rika]

The thing is i do not find mathematics truly beautiful unless i can imagine it in a platonic sense. Not to say any mathematics is non platonic, but what i mean by this is, i would prefer to imagine a hilbert space rather than think of it as a real or complex inner product space that is also a complete metric space with respect to the distance function induced by the inner product. I am more of a geometer than algebraist/number theorist (not that i don't find them interesting). I LOVE TO VISUALISE.
So the question is which field should i go into? Physics because you have to visualise everything in physics or pure geometry? Maybe a mixture?

If you like to visualise, think and use your imagination then why don't you try visual arts?

 

[discrete*]

It seems to me that you're young, brash and immature, philosopher_K. I'm not trying to insult you, but you seem to have a very misconstrued notion of what life at university is like and furthermore, what math and physics are like.

Maybe you should put the question of your career on the back burner for a while and get a couple of years of university education under you belt before you go around trumpeting these rather radical ideas.

And it wouldn't hurt you to become just a tad more humble in your ways. Relegating construction workers to "dumb apes" is an incredibly stupid thing to do. Quite honestly, because of these types of statements that you made, people are not taking you seriously. It's very hard to have a young person come out with "I'm just as smart as Witten and Tao" and than two posts later say something so ignorant.

And in regards to crushing your dream: well, kid -- it happens. Multiple times throughout life. Trust me. If you love physics or math or whatever it is you're proclaiming, than just do what you have to do to make yourself happy and don't whine about it the entire way there.

 

[feathermoon]

I just realized I'm this kid, except five years later. I continued to become increasingly disaffected by my physics course work, but not being a quitter I stuck with it. Now I have a bachelors degree in physics with a B- GPA. My prospects of getting into graduate school are slim and I wonder about how to proceed.

Yep, just major in mathematics, biology or something Philosopher K, you might thank yourself later. If you're not sure you're interested at this point, you might not decide you're not until its too late.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

I initially came in this thread interested in what the OP had to say since I changed my major from physics after finding out it really wasn't what I thought I expected it to be, so I switched to engineering. However, now all I rather say is that with that kind of attitude, it will be hard for him or her to be successful, regardless of where that person goes on to do in life.
The posters you are referring to said they did their high school studies in Toronto and Calgary. Coincidentally, I actually started high school in Toronto and finished in Calgary, and unless things have drastically changed in the last few years, there is no way that calculus or linear algebra are requirements to graduate. If that was the case, then dropout rates would shoot up at least 20% in one year. Here in Calgary you can graduate from high school without taking any sort of grade 12 math. The reason why students take these courses is because those are typically required by Canadian universities to be admitted as an undergrad in engineering/math/physics.

I never said it was necessary, I said we take linear algebra and calculus. You only need 3 math credits. But it is necessary to take Calculus, advanced functions and vectors in grade 12 to get into a Math/Science program.

 

[twofish-quant]

And as twofish said, the last 3 things on your list are pretty much common, boring, everyday concepts to physicists (I know, how can those things be boring?).

Because the math is trivial. To do special relativity, you just need high school math. Once you realize that all time dilation is just a "strange sort of rotation" it gets boring pretty quickly. Also, Einstein was a totally freaking genius because he came up with something so simple.

Physicists simply live in a different world than most people because we've become use to ideas that are beyond the comprehension of some people.

But it works the other way. Some "simple things" are physically quite complicated. Trying to figure out how a log burns in a fireplace is incredibly complex and more interesting to me that time dilation. Personally, I'm fascinated by trying to mathematically model complex systems, which is why there is an easy jump from theoretical astrophysics to finance.

 

[GoldPheonix]

Hey guys. I am a final year high school student and have lately been researching a career in Mathematics/Theoretical physics. Most recently i have come to the conclusion that:
1. I am not as gifted in mathematics as i thought
2. I do not enjoy PURE mathematics as much as i once believed i did.

I had this view that mathematicians sat around and had massive eureka moments (like Archimedes), solving problems such as fermats last theorem, or Poincare’s conjecture with flashes of genius. Yet when i look at the actual proofs just noted, i am struck by just how different my perceptions are. For example Wiles' proof is something like 150 pages long and filled with long definition/lemma/proof style formatting. It isn't that the ideas are not clever of right, its just that in the end i don't really care that much about ricci flow or modular forms as much as i thought i would. A modular form is not some abstract idea that exists wether we care or not, it is a definition which we have formed so as to define more objects. Disagree all you want, i have come to disagree with even plato.

With my love of mathematics corrupted i quickly turned to theoretical physics. After all what could be cooler than discovering a theory about dimensions, tiny strings, other universes or time itself. So once again i began to research the field of mathematical/theoretical physics, only to find that once again i was misled. The field was all about Gauges, Metric spaces and Eigenvectors, whatsmore the questions were not as philosophical as i enjoyed, no answers to the mystery’s of time or how the universe came into being, more about how abstract mathematics was perceived to fit in with reality.

For years i have read popsci books by hawking, Kaku and greene, speaking about the exact things i love. Yet why is the practice of theoretical physics so different to these ideals? What is wrong with me? did i miss some gene which stops me loving mathematics as much as Edward Witten or Stephen Hawking? Does it just not click in my head? Or do i just need more training in mathematics and physics before i see the true beauty beneath the surface?
I have tried to find this beauty but so far, no matter which college book i read, there is nothing like the excitement i felt when reading a brief history of time.

Are the days of Einstein gone? Did the ever exist in the first place? I am so damn confused!
If i am right, then what the hell do i do with my life?

There are a few of issues here:

1.) Honestly, in sum total I've probably read about 5 popular science articles in my life; however, a NOVA episode was something that helped me make my decision to become a physicist (I should note that I'm a 4th year physics and mathematics BS student, so I'm not actually a physicist yet although I've done professional research). I was not attracted to physics because it sounded cool, but because I enjoy mathematics and the application of mathematics. In my third year of high school, I took a physics course and hated it, although I thought the ideas were interesting. I decided to take another physics course, and ended up enjoying the difficulty of physics and the beauty of using equations to describe reality. My enjoyment of the two has only increased since then. So, I'm in a unique situation where reading pop-sci never interested me, and so my views of physics were never really tainted by them.

2.) Along the lines of 1, in my first university course on physics, my professor explained to the class: "If the thought of spending hours trying to figure out how a fix a piece of equipment to get an experiment working sounds interesting, you should think about experimental physics. If the thought of spending hours trying to solve mathematical problems in order to get closer to understanding the predictions made by a model sounds interesting, you should consider theoretical physics." My advice is to both think and not think in the long term. At the moment, you should ask yourself the following question: "Do you enjoy the mathematics you're doing now? Do see and appreciate the logical elegance behind them? Do you find mathematics to be interesting at the level that your current level?" The thing is, statements about metric tensors, eigenvectors, and gauge fields sounds very intimidating. But that's only fair; when you were a seven year old, the concept of trigonometry sounded hard. You weren't ready for the idea, so of course they sounded difficult and overly technical; but this is precisely why we send students through undergrad --to get them ready to learn advanced concepts. So don't worry about what you're learning in the long term --if you enjoy the technical mathematics that you're currently engaged in, this will tell you more about what math you will think is interesting in the future and will be more informative than the advanced math you think is interesting now. With that said, think in the long term. If you don't like the math you're doing now and don't feel like it's interesting, you may very well want to consider. However, I do have to inquire: mathematics is the language of physics and mathematics is very technical, so why did you expect that physicists and mathematicians wouldn't be engaged in very technical language? Metric tensors, gauge groups and fields, eigensystems, etc, are mathematics; these make up parts of the language of physics. Did you really expect that physics wasn't going to be technical?

Also, I can tell you the following with utmost certainty --if you don't like theoretical physics because it's too technical, you will absolutely abhor modern mathematics. While some modern physicists have ignored the advances in abstract mathematics, absolutely every modern pure mathematician almost exclusively engages in abstract mathematics.


3.) Being a physicist is not easy. If you don't like things because they get too technical and are not romantic enough, I can say that physics is definitely not for you. Again, you really don't know how you're going to feel about advanced math and physics yet because you're not at a level where you can understand them and either appreciate or be indifferent to them --only time will really tell that (should you choose to go this route). But make no mistake, mathematics and physics are incredibly difficult and technical subjects. You will struggle, you will fail to understand concepts initially, and you will challenged in every course. None of this means, ultimately, that you'll be a bad physicist or mathematician, but you should be aware that the sciences are not easy. Like Nietzsche said, and this particularly true in math and physics, "whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."


My advice is, although perhaps I'm biased, to continue on with a double major in mathematics and physics at a university level. If after a few semesters you find you still enjoy neither, to switch majors or find a different career. There's no wrong or right answer to this, you simply should find what you like doing.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

I am more of a geometer than algebraist/number theorist (not that i don't find them interesting).

I would be surprised if you actually knew anything about these fields. One thing you should also realize is that just because you want to do physics doesn't mean you have to pretend to understand and enjoy everything about physics/maths. It's OK to be honest with yourself. Even then, the time when you can consider things like this is years off for you - start your undergraduate first and take it from there.

If I could give you one point of advice to consider when contemplating your future career it is this: before you start any proper training, forget what you think you know.

Being snobby and making judgements about things you've barely even heard of never mind begin to understand is silly and will ultimately likely cause you great disadvantage.

So the question is which field should i go into? Physics because you have to visualise everything in physics or pure geometry? Maybe a mixture?

Well, luckily you can't study 'pure geometry' at undergraduate level so that isn't a decision you have to make for the time being. Also, basing your career choice on the fact that you like to 'visualise' and that alone is silly. Life isn't that simple.

Last piece of advice: You'll quickly need to drop the act and grow up a big. Accepting that you aren't going to be the next Einstein isn't the point, the point is that you're the next *you* - you have no idea where you career is going to take you. Just because you happen to have heard of a few of the most famous physicists in history doesn't mean they're the only ones that have done something of merit, or something that has changed the world. When you have the machinery that an undergraduate degree gives you, it's actually reasonably easy to come up with something *new*, something that nobody has tried or even thought of before. I work in research, so I guess that's what I do - but it isn't the way I really think about it. For me, I enjoy the chase of building a program, letting it run on some data set and having a tense moment before displaying my plots to begin to find out if my new idea has 'worked'. I enjoy it for me.

Finally, to answer the title of your thread: Yes, completely but because you aren't yet at a stage where you can start to understand the kind of ideas you're talking about.

 

[Caramon]

Referring to anyone who was talking about taking Linear Algebra and Calculus in High School:

I was in an AP program in High School and graduated with University credits in Calculus I, Linear Algebra, and Classical Physics. University-level courses, Calculus I all the way up to l'hospital's rule, applications of integrals, etc. and Linear Algebra the actual first year-course.

It was by no means a requirement to graduate, I decided to get ahead by taking these courses in High School. Many people in my school barely passed Applied Math 30 and never took Physics. I just took a very advanced program that was offered because my school was "in the upper echelons".

 

[chill_factor]

Yes it is. Go into mechanical engineering, chemistry, anything but physics. You are me 4 years ago except I thought I was going to be the next biotech person, then I got real training in what biotech actually was. If you think something is so interesting and fun, it likely isn't. The most boring things are the most fun. The most fun things are the most boring.