[HN Gopher] The Theoretical Minimum (2013)
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The Theoretical Minimum (2013)
Author : c0r3dump3d1r
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-01-17 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theoreticalminimum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theoreticalminimum.com)
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| To the physicist here, how much of "physics" you really get if
| you go through all this "minimal" courses?
|
| To give it some context: I watched classical mechanics a bit.
| Basically it's just math in the end, and to be honest after 50%
| of the lectures I had the feeling that the "practical" side or
| "intuition" is lacking. Especially in case of the conservation
| law's.
|
| So maybe the question would be how much more do you get if you go
| through a true physics bachelor progamm?
| drran wrote:
| If you want to understand physics, then you need to build
| physical models and demonstrations, or perform experiments. If
| you want to get correct answers and make predictions, or you
| want to build a virtual model, then you need to study math a
| lot.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The answer to your question is Labs. In the Labs you reproduce
| the results many of the 19-20th century experiments.
| Isinlor wrote:
| I went trough Quantum Mechanics course and it really helped me
| understand Quantum Mechanics on mathematical level. I had my
| head full of Quantum woo from popular science programs and I
| barely could make heads or tails out of it. Knowing basic
| mathematics behind it helped a lot.
| macilacilove wrote:
| I am not a physicist but I have gone through most of the
| courses. It is aimed at preparing you to be able to read
| theorethical phisics research papers. It is not supposed to be
| practical and is ignoring engineering physics and history of
| phsics for the most part.
|
| I think you can learn here the core concepts in theorethical
| phisics even at the masters program level, but you will not go
| through the same "math muscle training" that college students
| go through, so you will have to supplement that from elsewhere.
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the answer! Sounds good. Guess I would have
| to combine it a bit with Engineering Physics (or at least
| experimental physics) to get the most out of it, since had
| really some difficulties to undestand, why core concepts,
| like conservation of momentum for example are important.
| jarvist wrote:
| Physics is really a working knowledge, like computer
| programming. You have to be able to solve problems. All the
| 'practical' and 'intuitive' aspects of theoretical physics are
| built by working on problem sheets. A lot of progress in
| understanding (both personally and for the field!) is in
| tackling apparent paradoxes.
|
| Susskind's courses are very much overviews / appreciations. For
| each of these areas (GR, StatMech, Quantum etc.) you would
| expect several 30-hr lecturer courses + problem sheets (or
| equivalent working through a textbook) to gain a deep
| knowledge.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The lectures are also available for download as podcasts (with
| video!) so you don't need to watch them on youtube. At least in
| the Apple podcast app, but I'd imagine any podcast app will have
| them.
|
| I went through the two courses on relativity and enjoyed them.
| They were super mathy, but I expected that going in. I had to
| stop them for a while and actually strengthen my math skills. I'd
| say my understanding is C+ at best, but like Isinlor's comment,
| I'm pretty sure all the relativity woo is out of my head.
| crdrost wrote:
| The pop physics around relativity is particularly bad so I am
| happy that helped!
|
| Relativity does not have to be super mathy, special relativity
| is kind of just a postulation that maybe there's a different
| sort of Doppler shift in the world. In the normal Doppler
| shift, clocks moving towards you appear to tick fast and clocks
| moving away from you appear to tick slow. Relativity adds a
| universal effect where if you accelerate towards a clock, it
| will also appear to tick faster, in proportion to both your
| acceleration and its coordinate along that acceleration line.
| So it's just an anomalous Doppler shift, to first order. (And
| all higher-order behavior can be derived from that.)
|
| So like in the twin paradox, it is resolved because one of the
| twins accelerates towards the other twin, and when that
| acceleration is happening the other twin gets much much older
| very quickly because they are far away and the twin is
| accelerating towards them.
|
| Furthermore this makes it much easier to understand some
| aspects of general relativity quite quickly. For example you
| get gravitational time dilation without much effort, once you
| postulate that the state of nature is freefall and we are
| actually accelerating against that, in a constant acceleration
| _g_ upwards, which is why things in the natural state of
| freefall appear to accelerate downwards with acceleration _g_ ,
| you immediately predict that relativity will tell you that you
| see clocks in the upper atmosphere tick faster than they do
| down here. Furthermore you predict that if you could see
| through the Earth, at some surface below you you would
| hypothetically see clocks stand still, leading into a quick
| intuition for black holes.
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads:
|
| _The Theoretical Minimum_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14467181 - June 2017 (37
| comments)
|
| _Modern Physics From Scratch_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702985 - May 2013 (49
| comments)
| taubek wrote:
| I hope that I'll have time to go through this lectures. I didn't
| have any physics classes after the high school. It would be nice
| to refresh my knowledge and to learn something new :)
| biophysboy wrote:
| Physics PhD student here: stuff like this is awesome, but I also
| highly recommend the "bottom up approach" as well. Pick a little
| node in the vast physics network, something that interests you,
| and start digging deeper into the cluster connected to that
| curiosity.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| ViaScience has similar content on modern physics.
| https://youtu.be/SCUnoxJ5pho?list=PL193BC0532FE7B02C
|
| I prefer this modern presentation (animations, simulations,
| plots) over the antiquated chalkboard presentation.
| james-redwood wrote:
| The great thing about this is that it bridges the gap well
| between pop science and actual academic physics: certainly ideal
| for capable high school students. And it doesn't skip important
| sections or neglect them either.
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