New answers tagged education
1
Landau/Lifshitz is simply overkill for getting started in learning physics, especially since you are planning to do this on your own.
In general, you need a book that takes you by the hand and has a lot of worked examples in it. Most physics text books include exercises, but they do not give you worked solutions.
There are some text-books to which ...
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If you like video lectures, you might appreciate recordings of Prof. Balakrishnan at IIT Madras. Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. The course was directed at engineering majors (so your background should be sufficient) and Prof. Balakrishnan is universally loved and acknowledged to be one of the best lecturers.
Of course, there are tons more on the ...
1
My question is why do we distinguish between both kinds of vectors
Take an arbitrary vector space. Then, the set of scalar-valued linear functions on that space inherits a linear structure in an obvious way and becomes a vector space in its own right.
We distinguish between these spaces because they are distinct.
Now, in the finite dimensional case ...
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Short answer: we keep track of covariant and contravariant vectors because it gives us the freedom to use different quantities with respect to different bases and to find dot products of covariant and contravariant vectors without having to move everything into the tangent or cotangent basis and use the metric every time we want to find a physically ...
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First of all, one has to distinguish between indirect and direct predictions theories. For example concerning theories describing physics at very high energy regimes, such as energy scales where quantum gravity effects are expected to kick in, it is clear to everybody that these high energy scales are with the current technologies not DIRECTLY accessible at ...
1
I will have a go at an answer.
Many good theoretical physicists attempt to create the Theory Of Everything (TOE): a mathematical theory that will model anything we observe in physical reality.
Very many of them are concentrating their effort on some model using string theory.
Suppose that we find a TOE that fits all known elementary particle data and ...
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Physicists are tasked to construct models of reality that are internally consistent and that have predictive power. Working on black holes and Hawking radiation fits this bill.
The growing theoretical framework on black hole thermodynamics is absolutely essential to eliminate any internal inconsistencies that seemed to affect thermodynamics when applied to ...
2
The idea that every prediction should be falsifiable is good as a first approximation. But the science is complex, and in it everything is linked to everything, almost literally. So actually we never know if some unfalsifiable prediction would be of any use. It can become falsifiable later. It can lead to some ideas which would lead to some new falsifiable ...
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Your question is essentially asking for opinions and will therefore likely be closed, but I think what you're missing is the fact that in any discipline where theoretical questions are inextricably linked with experimental questions it's impossible to judge in advance which theoretical questions are going to have practical ramifications. Physics and science ...
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Ron Maimon is entirely correct when he says that GA is precisely Clifford algebra, as any book or paper using the phrase "Geometric Algebra" is sure to say. But I think he misses both the point of the question and the point of "GA".
The question
I'll paraphrase the question as: Is GA a good, pedagogical way to introduce the mathematical side of physics to ...
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