Is my view of Theoretical physics romanticized?

[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 a lot!

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, independent 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 a lot!

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 a lot!

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.