After working through lots of physics examples / problem sets, it's been interesting learning how often little tricks are used to simplify things e.g. ignore small terms, make small angle approximations, change coordinates, use natural units where you set some constants to 1
Rough day of travel. First flight was delayed so we missed our connection. Second flight to NY had to circle in the air until it ran out of fuel and got diverted to Cleveland. I guess on the bright side I get to visit Cleveland for the first time
Hit the point in my physics studying where I need linear algebra so going to do a major refresh. I learned it for my first job out of college but had a bit of a miserable experience then due to cramming it in after intense work hours but now I get to relearn it for fun!
The person who adopted our foster puppy reached out to me (we opted in to be contacted if they want) and sent a happy video of him. Such a wonderful feeling 🥰
Our first foster puppy Fitz got adopted today! I'm already crying out of happiness but also a little sad we probably won't see him again. Muddy Paws in NYC is a wonderful org if you're ever interested in adopting or fostering 🥰
I went into my physics studying with an open mind on what I would like most. So far astrophysics still holds up as most interesting to me! I loved electromagnetism way more than I anticipated. I prob liked quantum a bit less than I expected (lack of intuition was strange for me)
Fully focused on Taylor's Classical Mechanics now to dive deeper into mechanics. First few chapters were mostly a review of intro mechanics. Now learning Lagrangian and later Hamiltonian. Brushing up a lot more on my calculus and it's fun! Enjoying author's writing style too
How special! One of my absolute favorite books of all time is A Mind at Play about Claude Shannon, it was very inspiring to me. My friend mentioned to the author Jimmy Soni who is her friend and he shipped me a signed copy 🥹
It blows my mind that based on observations only 5% of the universe is made up of conventional matter (e.g. atoms, molecules, etc)! Dark matter makes up 26% (doesn't emit any electromagnetic radiation) and dark energy is 69% (no gravitational effect, also no EM radiation)
Finished reading first of my physics textbooks University Physics by Young and Freedman! For self studying, thought the core material (mechanics, E&M, etc) were fantastic. Lots of great explanations and examples. Felt modern physics (quantum, nuclear, etc) wasn't detailed enough
Watching my friend's biomedical engineering PhD dissertation defense right now on Zoom. So exciting but also I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about and got lost on slide 1 lol
Started intro to particle physics and it's the most new terms I've had to learn (e.g. pions, leptons, hadrons, baryons, strangeness, charm, etc)
Also entertained reading things like "the gluon is absorbed by the antiblue antiquark, which becomes an antired antiquark"
