What courses youv'e enjoyed the most?

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Im still at my first year, but in this semester I am learning mathematical logic, which is kind of more advanced than the other courses, ill be covering goedel's theorems which is already an exciting thing.
perhaps in summer ill be learning calculus 3 and algebra b1, which is essentially an UG course on group theory, if my school will offer these courses in the summer.

another course which is interesting is 'introduction to modern physics' which is mainly a course on special relativity and a little bit introduction to quantum theory.

anyway, what about you?

 

[lalbatros]

Classical mechanics in the first and second year, and twenty years later.
Strength of materials because I found that incredibly easy in practice (you know from time to time this impression is funny).
Quantum mechanics, third year.

But most of all I hated thermodynamics, and that's why I studied statistical physics more than requested. Now thermodynamics is my strongest point and I am working with it very often professionally.

 

[Mororvia]

One of the most worthwhile (and I also enjoyed..) was a pre-calc course I took when I first began college. We went into more depth than what I did in high school of course. We also learned what all of the different functions looked like when graphed, and what would happen to the plot when you do something like x - 2, etc. Anyway, it was a good preparation for future math courses.

My favorite physics course was probably an optics course with lab. Lasers are fun.

I also think I hate thermodynamics the most. I'm not a fan of the Kittel book.

 

[JasonRox]

Topology, Analysis, Abstract Linear Algebra, Ethics (Philosophy), and the PoliSci Seminars. All because the professors were awesome.

I have other awesome professors, but they ended up teaching lame subjects, so no points on that.

 

[radou]

My favourite courses were Statics I & II, and every math course I took. Fluid mechanics was interesting, too.

 

[neurocomp2003]

CS/MATH: Theory of Computation(Computability theory), Graphics(rendering), Dynamical Systems, ODEs, Graph Theory

PHYS: Astrophysics(Stellar & Cosmo) & Analytical Mech

PSYCH: Vision, Reading Course in NeuralNets, Project course in Neural Nets
(missed out on the childdev and Audition/music theory)

 

[tim_lou]

oh yeah... I'm loving Classical Mechanics... though the professor could've skiped some tedious algebra and give us more theories...

 

[cristo]

My favorite class was Special relativity. Partly due to the fact that it's an interesting subject anyway, but also because the professor who was teaching it was brilliant. He taught us the history behind the theory, which helped bring the topic more to life. He had the class enthralled for most of the lectures to an extent I've never seen before.

 

[mathwonk]

1st year calc from john tate, maybe advanced calc from lynn loomis, and diff eq from hermann gluck, a course on foundations of analysis from george mackey, and 1st year grad algebra from maurice auslander, and algebraic geometry from alan mayer, some algebraic topology from ed brown junior, raoul bott and ron stern, several complex variables from hugo rossi, and riemann surfaces from herb clemens, then some post grad courses from phillip griffiths on hodge theory and david mumford on moduli, some beuatiful lectures by rob lazarsfeld on vector bundles, ..., and many wonderful conference lectures.

i guess i liked a lot of them.

 

[PhilosophyofPhysics]

Physics III and Thermal Physics so far. I've not had E&M, Optics, or QM yet.

 

[quasar987]

Mathwise, I liked complex analysis the most and Physicswise E&M III (waves in matter + covariant formulation + intro to classical field theory)

 

[ircdan]

humanities, speech, complex analysis, algebra, human nutrition, topology, differential equations, pre-algebra, technical writing

 

[HungryChemist]

Physics-Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics
Engineering-Signal Processing, Biomedical Imaging
Math-Complex Analysis, Statistics

 

[kdinser]

Digital design course using VHDL to implement digital circuits on FPGA's, very cool stuff .

 

[imastud]

1st year calc from john tate, maybe advanced calc from lynn loomis, and diff eq from hermann gluck, a course on foundations of analysis from george mackey, and 1st year grad algebra from maurice auslander, and algebraic geometry from alan mayer, some algebraic topology from ed brown junior, raoul bott and ron stern, several complex variables from hugo rossi, and riemann surfaces from herb clemens, then some post grad courses from phillip griffiths on hodge theory and david mumford on moduli, some beuatiful lectures by rob lazarsfeld on vector bundles, ..., and many wonderful conference lectures.

i guess i liked a lot of them.

easy on the name dropping dude

 

[las3rjock]

Physics: As an undergraduate, I enjoyed freshman mechanics. As a graduate student, I have enjoyed solid-state physics.
Engineering: As an undergraduate, I enjoyed Fourier optics. As a graduate student, I have enjoyed holography & optical information processing (taught by Emmett Leith, a pioneer in the field) and image processing.
Mathematics: As a graduate student, I enjoyed advanced calculus (at the level of baby Rudin).

 

[mathwonk]

stud, I am sorry if it offends you to know who the good teachers were, but i thought that was the question.

i see other responders are just naming the topic they liked, but in my opinion, they are missing the point, that it is not the subject, but the prof that makes the course good.

there are many courses i thought i disliked until i learned that a good prof makes a course good.

i disliked physics until i got a good prof, but then it was almost too late for me.

i would enjoy a little more name dropping of good profs from others here. this would serve as a sort of antidote to the anonymous "rate the professor" site, if some of us would praise our own good profs.

when i was in college, some students liked calc or physics and others did not, but apparently everyone liked any course they took from bott, or gluck, or tate, or joseph kitchen (I never had him).

loomis was not my favorite prof, and he had some unpleasant qualities as a teacher, but i still learned some basic useful advanced calc from him, so i somewhat grudgingly listed him.

i did not list birkhoff whose algebra course was unstimulating, but I listed the less famous auslander whose algebra course was wonderful, nor did i list loomis for his measure theory and real analysis course which was not particularly useful, but i listed the perhaps less famous hugo rossi whose analysis course was superb.

Joseph Kitchen was a teaching legend in college. i still remember roughly the review i read of his advanced calc course in 1960: "A large minority of the students in Kitchen's course thought that he was God."

He was the author of a great (introductory) calculus book, now long out of print, but still worth searching out. unfortunately he did not receive tenure, and the advanced calc course was never again taught with the same flair, as long as i was there.I should perhaps admit I was not a very good student in most of these wonderful courses, and hence did not deserve to be in them, but I did enjoy and appreciate their excellence.

 

[arunma]

As an undergraduate, the physics courses I most enjoyed were analytical mechanics, electromagnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and the experimental course in which I got to perform my own research project (which was probably my most favorite class). I also really liked space plasma physics.

As for math...well, I don't really enjoy math in general; seems more like a necessary evil than something that anyone would do for fun (no offense to the mathematicians, just personal preference). Having said that, I liked multivariable calc, complex analysis, and algebraic geometry. I remember being overly fascinated with Groebner bases.

 

[mathwonk]

do you mind sharing the names of those teachers who made it interesting? e.g. in algebraic geometry? or perhaps what books they used that were enjoyable?

i am considering teaching algorithmic algebriac geometry and am assuming the book of cox little and oshea would serve well.

 

[arunma]

do you mind sharing the names of those teachers who made it interesting? e.g. in algebraic geometry? or perhaps what books they used that were enjoyable?

i am considering teaching algorithmic algebriac geometry and am assuming the book of cox little and oshea would serve well.

No problem...sadly I don't remember either my professor's name or the book we used (which is pretty sad, since it was only last Fall). I'll look that up and get back to you.

 

[mathwonk]

that seems odd to me, i recall the following from 40 + years ago:

freshman year: philosophy: rogers albritton, republic of plato, nicomachean ethics, oedipus rex, platos symposium; calc: john tate and tom lehrer, courants dif and integ calc; french: ?, la voie royale, malraux; physics: ?, resnick and halliday; logic: willard van orman quine, his own books-methods of logic, mathematical logic.

sophomore year: algebra: birkhoff, birkhoff and maclane; calc 2: john tate, calc book by taylor; french lit: frohock and schroeder, antigone, la chanson de roland, baudelaire; russian: frederick? blum, mr. caslon, pikovaya dama (queen of spades by pushkin), statsione smotrityel (the stationmaster by ?)

junior year: advanced calc: loomis, foundations of modern analysis by jean dieudonne'; diff eq: gluck, book by earl coddington; russian lit in translation: vsevolod setchkarev, war and peace, brothers karamazov, idiot, various stories ; psychology: jerome bruner, language and thought of the child -jean piaget, thought and language-lev vigotsky, a book on linguistics by roger brown, bruner's own works; behaviorism: b.f. skinner, brave new world-aldous huxley, walden 2-skinner;

i aldo audited real analysis intro by george mackey, no book, wonderful lecture notes.

senior year: real analysis: loomis-no book but i read m.e. munroe, halmos, and riesz - nagy; bildungsroman: ?, portrait of the artist-joyce, great expectations-dickens, mill on the floss-george eliot, ...; shakespeare: harry levin, henry the fifth, much ado about nothing,...; banach algebras: bernard glickfeld, spectral theory- edgar lorch.

 

[scorpa]

Just to be different my favorite classes so far have been organic chemistry, biochemistry and microbiology. Not only did I love the subject matter but my profs were all absolutely amazing.

 

[Pyrrhus]

My favourite courses were Statics I & II, and every math course I took. Fluid mechanics was interesting, too.

Hey, i enjoyed Statics and it is my favourite, too. It is a course i understand very well, but i only took one static, what were you taught on statics II?

The next course i enjoyed was Differential Equations.

 

[radou]

Hey, i enjoyed Statics and it is my favourite, too. It is a course i understand very well, but i only took one static, what were you taught on statics II?

The next course i enjoyed was Differential Equations.

Statics I was about determinate systems, while II dealt with indeterminate ones.

 

[Pyrrhus]

Cool, i was taught inderterminate in structural analysis II and strength of materials I.

 

[Maxwell]

Modern control systems was the best in my opinion.

 

[AsianSensationK]

Math-wise, I thought abstract algebra, advance calculus, and mathematical statistics were interesting. I especially appreciated my abstract algebra course, because the prof (I think his name was Lazarsfeld) was an exceptional teacher.

Philosophy wise, I'd go with logic and ethics. Logic was great just because it was so helpful with all the math courses I took later, and ethics was kind of an interesting segment of philosophy that incorporated so much from other areas. Lots of philosophy of language, metaphysics, and logic were tied together in that course. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of that course was how deeply it covered Kant's arguments in his Groundwork. For the longest time, I failed to understand where he was coming from.

Business wise, I really liked intro to corporate finance, managerial accounting, and intermediate microeconomics. I felt these three subjects really tie together nicely, and form a nice foundation for knowledge of business and money. Finance is especially cool when they start to cover capital markets.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

Honors Cosmology perhaps my favorite, definitely because of the lecturers. I've never really enjoyed optics, and because of that I (stupidly..) spend less time studying it than I should. I'm catching up now though since a lot of the wave techniques covered in optics courses come up plenty in quantum mechanics - be warned!

Must say I haven't really enjoyed quantum mechanics so far, I don't mind doing it I just don't find it the subject that...great. Very good lecturer though, he put some focus in the last lecture on sci-fi appearances of QM and the Gravity Gun in Half Life.

Also, I'd say through no result of the lecturers (They aren't bad per-se just not very good...) I've always thoroughly enjoyed math courses - I just find immense satisfaction from working through a difficult math problem. Specifically any Calculus variant, coming to the end of my physics undergrad next year I'm thinking about taking a math course afterwards.

 

[neurocomp2003]

i forgot to list the grad school courses I enjoyed: Computational Geometry and all the HPC courses I've taken.

mathwonk: I'd have to disagree with the "[prof making the course statement]" .
A good prof could teach a crappy course, and a bad prof could teach a good course.
As long as the prof provides good references (ie textbook, courseware,onlinestuff), the student is able to also enjoy the class if they are a selflearner.

For example my senior graph theory class was taught by a grad student in the math dept, but because of the textbook he chose I was able to enjoy the class. https://www.physicsforums.com/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=1293520

On the other hand my neuralnet class should have been exciting, because the textbook was great but the postdoc prof was rather monotone and i fell a sleep most of the time.

The difference between the two examples is that based on my mathematical background at the time i was able to immerse my self in graph theory(4th year) and understanding the proofs but I was not prepared to take NNETs(forced to take in 2nd year) because i did not have the foundations for it...stupid statistics ARGH.

An example of a good prof teaching a crappy course Dr. Sprung teaching Quantum. =]

An example of a good prof teaching a good course, but i didn't pay attention in class and rather chose to read the book would be Dynamical systems by Perko. Also ODE(3yr) was a good class with good textbooks, but i didn't much like the prof...granted the course was at 8am and i could never get up for it and she yelled at me because she said if she at to get up at 6am to get to the class then anyone should be able to. I still got my 85-90% in the class because of the textbooks.

 

[las3rjock]

i see other responders are just naming the topic they liked, but in my opinion, they are missing the point, that it is not the subject, but the prof that makes the course good.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Unfortunately, I have had many mediocre teachers in college/graduate school and only a few good/great ones.

 

[JSBeckton]

I guess I'm the only fan of thermodynamics...

 

[Brad Barker]

I guess I'm the only fan of thermodynamics...

i liked thermal physics. it's fun "collecting" state functions like U, H, F, and G. it's kind of like pokemon!

i also like stat mech, but maybe because it's just so much easier than my graduate quantum 2 class. :tongue:

other favorites: honors physics 2 (the baby EM class) and honors modern physisc (special relativity with what is basically the quantum 1 class covered in a little over a month).

 

[mathwonk]

i stil maintain the prof makes the courtse in most cases. a "good prof" never teaches a crappy course, unless your defn of "good prof" is someone famus in the field. that is not a good prof.

one confirmation of my thesis is the example above of the student who had lazarsfeld for abstract algebra. i will warrant no noe here or anywhere else has ever had a crappy course from rob lazarsfeld. he is a student of fulton from brown,. waslater at ucla and is now at michigan, and is not just a great algebraic geometer, but a fantastic teacher who alwYS PREOPARES THOROUGHLY AND BELIEVES IN ACTUAlly geting down on the students level and giving insight into the subject.

he never blows you away with high powered stuff that conceals the phenomena. he teaches everything well and is highly in demand as a lecturer at profesional conferences because we like to understand what we are told too!

of course a good student can also make lemonade out of lemons by reading thoroughly in the book. but that is not a good course, that is a good student making do in a bad course.

in a good cousre the profesor gives much mroe than is in the book, and makes it understandable to you.

many students here seem not to realize that even the best books are usually miles behind current knowledge, and even reading a great book, cannot possibly make up for a good prof who gives you insight from his/her own grasp of the field.

if the book seems better than the prof, then the prof is probably not very good. I know I have been spoiled in this regard, by having profs like lazarsfeld, tate, mumford, bott, hartshorne, but many of you also have great profs but are not even bothering to notice it.

It is incredible that so few people here even know the names of their profs much less their bios.

Do yourself a favor, find out who is teaching the course, and choose the good ones.

and a grad student is not ncesarily a bad prof, althugh most are not too good for lack of experience.

in my school days, essentially the best physics prof was a grad student named bamberg, who is now quite well known at least for his teaching.

of course the physics dept in thoe days was famous for its terrible teaching of undergraduates and turned many of us off almost permamently to the subject.

undergrads should never put up with this attitude that a dept does bnot care about its students who are paying their salaries.

in my day too, enough of the more courageous students complained loudly enough that in the 2nd semester they gave us a good prof. i had already lost focus unfortunately by then.

the poor lecturer first semester was a famous physicist, but i unfortunately forget the excellent lecturer second semester, probably because i had foolishly stopped attending most of the time.

in psychology the famous profesors (take my word for their fame) were mostly notoriously poor profs, one for his mediocre lectures and another for his egomania and treatment of students.

a fantastic counterexample was guest lecturer named roger brown, whose bio you can look up on google. he gave the one memorable lecture in an otherwise bad course.

this course was so bad that the only other good memory i have from it was from the reading, a sure sign the prof stunk.

 

[mathwonk]

i will go further and say that one good prof can entirely change the value of your education. a student who goes to georgia and has say ted shifrin for the bulk of his undergraduate career, is getting a math education that will rival what he would get at berkeley or anywhere else.

in fact shifrin was one of the very most honored instructors at berkeley befor coming to georgia. this was a case of a grad student who taught better than the profs.

on the other hand a student who goes to harvard and takes only courses from harried inexperienced grad students, or uncaring but famous full profs, wil get the same educaton he/she could have had at any mediocre school for a fraction of the tuition money.

i recall being an undergrad at harvard, taking honors calc from tate, and comparing notes with smarter more well prepared friends who had chosen a run of the mill course from some grad student, or even famous but uninspiring prof, and thinking: gosh they are not excited at all about being at this great school. what a mistake!if learning were just about reading the book, no one would go to college and pay tuition, as the same books are available for a relative song, (compared to tuition).

if you say you got great course from a poor prof by reading the book, then you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for an education you could have had free in the library.

you are not taking advantage of your college experience and are wasting a LOT of money.

the only thing you are getting for your money is the reading list, which you could have picked up the first day for free in my day, or online nowdays.

take a hint guys, start collecting on your huge investment of time and money.

 

[quantumdude]

At RPI:
Intermediate Mechanics I and II from Ed Brown.
Advanced Calculus from Lester Rubenfeld.
Abstract Algebra from David Schmidt.
Quantum Mechanics II and III from the late, great Nimai Mukhopadhyay.

At SUNY Albany:
Advanced Linear Algebra from Mark Steinberger.
Group Theory Seminar from Mark Steinberger.