Who said you had to be good at maths for a PhD. Hahahahaha.
Maths is never used these days it's all done by software.
Ideas and concepts are far more important.
In 20 years at work I've never needed more than grade 10 maths. LMAO
Please forgive an old school fart.
My vibration & noise classes professor made us do simple discrete fourier transforms by hand, said it helped in visualising abstract concepts.
( very nice gent for a professor, friendly, very patient, even somewhat modest. http://www.shipstructure.org/pdf/78symp08.pdf )
My vibration & noise classes professor made us do simple discrete fourier transforms by hand, said it helped in visualising abstract concepts.
( very nice gent for a professor, friendly, very patient, even somewhat modest. http://www.shipstructure.org/pdf/78symp08.pdf )
I admire the old farts. Had a guy I worked with (recently retired) he was one of the first guys to do extensive work with super conductive materials. He is one of the few people that I truly thought were brilliant but his lack of arrogance (like Papa) is what I admired most.
Albert Michelson's Harmonic Analyzer
Four+ videos of antique analog mechanical computer in action.
After seeing, Fourier transform makes sense for the first time.
Agonizing that I couldn't afford the hardcover book, just noticed
that the entire volume is also offered as a PDF at no charge.
Book has the equations (few as possible), and no maths in any
of the videos I watched (I havn't watched past first four yet).
Last edited:
I have telepathy.
When I do something strange and I see the expressions on people's faces, I know exactly what they're thinking.
When I do something strange and I see the expressions on people's faces, I know exactly what they're thinking.
Not knowing the math is not a barrier SY. Never has been, never will be.
Knowing only the math, well... even a monkey could do that part. The math is just regurgitation based on rote memory function. It is not a skill, it is not intelligence, not by any real measure. As a matter of fact, knowing only the math is the dangerous part, the psychologically illiterate part... as that is the genesis and the emergence of the dogma of science.
Which is the real horror show part that kills science. It does not define science, it does not drive science -- math is only the sideshow.
if one is to mistake math for being the science, then one would really be in error. To project it upon others, is at least as bad an act.
I scored in the top of my classes with perfect or near perfect marks up until second semester calculus. Then I just let it go, and decided to not waste any more brain cells in that area of rote function.
We can always talk about notorious black ops corporations and how some of their ex-employees somehow end up being moderators on some technical boards, so as to control discussion or contemplation. To do so without being seen or noticed.
Last edited:
I've only heard of something like this in fiction (and how would I ever hear about a "real" one? I'm not a telepath, like SOME people in this thread!). "The Demolished Man" is a classic novel and (IMHO) a good read.
Until you have to write a theory paper from the ground up. Oooof. All those maths that I've been letting form cobwebs for the past years are coming to bite me. And, you take for granted how much that prior math gave you the language to understand the concepts.
SY -- I thought we used that model as an extremely simple model for a Hydrogen atom? Am I mis-remembering?
Either way, I "suck" at matrix math (for some reason, and at least compared to my cohort) so I got eaten alive by my more advanced optics/quantum electronics grad courses where the profs couldn't actually communicate (or understand themselves) the actual concepts and just hid behind the equations. Some were excellent, to be fair. Gotta know your limitations--that's (one out of many of) mine.
KBK -- 1.) This explains so, so much. 2.) Your loss, as so little of it is rote memorization, and so much of it is like having a workshop in your mind--it provides so many tools.
Yes, you are. This is "particle in a box" with a tilted floor.
For hydrogen atoms, we just use a spherically symmetric Coulomb potential, do the Hamiltonian in spherical coordinates, then separate variables. It's pretty easy and straightforward- the eigenfunctions become a product of spherical harmonics of theta and phi, and a Laguerre polynomial times an exponential in r. The spectra come flopping out.
Ah, right. It's been a few years (I also missed the tilted floor). I think you do those as homework problems within the same week, though, so I probably merged them in my head.
It's been a few more years for me. I found one of my old QM publications from (cough, cough) 1978 and found that I can no longer follow my own math. 😀
I'm a *couple* years your junior. 😀
I'll be better at this stuff after a couple headache filled weeks... haha.
I'll be better at this stuff after a couple headache filled weeks... haha.
Yeah, when I was your age, my mind was a bit more math-agile than it is these days. Sigh...
Here's one you'll appreciate: I was a junior undergrad, and my best buddy (who was a year ahead of me and played lead guitar in our band) was giving me grief about not knowing how to do contour integrals. I responded that I could use conventional methods, and felt I was pretty damned good at doing integrals. He gave me a problem which I spent about a day attacking. I ended up with a series of solvable terms, and an integral (which was integral from 0 to infinity of log x/(1+x^2)). OK, I was decomposing that one using integration by parts and chewing through it slowly while I was at the library. My faculty advisor walked by and said (loudly), "HEY STU, WHATCHA DOING?" "Oh, I'm trying to solve this last integral." He stared at it for about 3 seconds, and said, loudly, "IT'S ZERO," grinned, and walked away.
An hour later, I had it figured out. Yes, it was zero.
Here's one you'll appreciate: I was a junior undergrad, and my best buddy (who was a year ahead of me and played lead guitar in our band) was giving me grief about not knowing how to do contour integrals. I responded that I could use conventional methods, and felt I was pretty damned good at doing integrals. He gave me a problem which I spent about a day attacking. I ended up with a series of solvable terms, and an integral (which was integral from 0 to infinity of log x/(1+x^2)). OK, I was decomposing that one using integration by parts and chewing through it slowly while I was at the library. My faculty advisor walked by and said (loudly), "HEY STU, WHATCHA DOING?" "Oh, I'm trying to solve this last integral." He stared at it for about 3 seconds, and said, loudly, "IT'S ZERO," grinned, and walked away.
An hour later, I had it figured out. Yes, it was zero.
From the CBS TV show 60 Minutes, at the Large Hadron Collider. About the Higgs boson.
"The Higgs" may have been found here, in the Collider in Switzerland, but it was conceived in Scotland by a person almost as hard to find as the particle itself. Peter Higgs doesn't have much use for computers, email, or cellphones and doesn't own a TV. In 1964, he was a junior professor at the University of Edinburgh when he came up with his theory. He was 35 at the time, and not taken seriously.
Peter Higgs:
Not many people took much notice of this kind of theory at the time. They were doing other things, which was why it was left to a few people, a few eccentrics to do it.
Lesley Stahl:
Did you use any machines or any special equipment?
Peter Higgs:
A pencil and paper.
Lesley Stahl:
And pencil and paper?
Peter Higgs:
Well--
Lesley Stahl:
That's all you used?
Peter Higgs:
Well, that's all you need for writing equations--
Extra dimensions? Dark matter? A more powerful Collider hunts for clues - CBS News
- Status
- Not open for further replies.