Natural Science Forum / Physics / General Physics / April 2007

  If you don't get any satisfaction from mastering homework problems,
  physics may not be for you. Take more math!

  A Physics Booklist: Recommendations from the Net
    http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Administrivia/booklist.html

From Sam's pointer, under the header
  "General Physics (so even mathematicians can understand it!)
jump directly to nr 3: Feynman Lectures.
Go for it.

Dirk Vdm

Build a radio, progress from there.

On Apr 27, 8:28 pm, mz08...@students.salisbury.edu wrote:

 Sucks, doesn't it? But besides what Sam and Dirk say, "dull" pulley/
block observations and calculations teach you several things; to pay
close attention to what you're looking at, to see exactly what's
happening in terms of what you think you're looking at, and how to
tell whether it's worthwhile to check for what else might be happening
that you didn't think to check for (frinst is including friction
important in _every_ case or can you safely neglect it, and when).

 How does that prepare you for modern cosmology? Check out how far
down in the noise such signals as those that tell us about Gliese 581c
are. Imagine how "dull" it must be to do those measurements and
calculations. ;>)

 You want fun? Read stuff just a bit beyond your current level of
comprehension. If you don't enjoy the required stretching you're in
the wrong field.

 Besides I have no calculus at all, but I can make a fair guess what
a domain wall (assuming they exist) would look like. Can you?

 Mark L. Fergerson

Nobody understands cosmology.  It is a big bunch of consistent
observations modeled in any of a large number of unphysical ways.
When an experiment is performed that pushes their faces into mud they
respond by minutely altering falsified theory to slip under
measurement.  Super-Kamiokande and proton decay, CERN's CAST and axion
detection, Lyman Alpha forest and the Fine Structure Constant changing
over time, ultracryogenic Si and Ge dark matter detectors, Higgs
particle detection...

Affine, teleparallel, and noncommutative gravitation theories wholly
contain General Relativity as a restricted case (Equivalence Principle
is true).  When there are that many ways to tack on extra baggage one
is motivated to ask, "is GR sufficient or is then extra stuff
necessary?"  If the latter, then angular momentum is not conserved and
all of physics needs a fundamental rewrite.  We should be risking
looks at the disjoint non-overlap not guaranteeing publication of leat
publishable bits for looking at agreement.

All the problems could disappear (including string theory that demands
the EP through BRST invariance).  All ya gotta do is present two lumps
that reproducibly vacuum free fall along divergent trajectories
without violating any prior observation.  Uncle Al volunteers a case -
reduction to practice and detection,

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2

Standard physics works brilliantly and perfectly.  We have only a weak
grasp of the fundamentals - way too much math and not nearly enough
exclusionary experimentation.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html
overview of all physics
http://www.motionmountain.net
overview of all physics
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/
mathematical physics
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/
the mysterious and brilliant Chris Hillman

You're not the type that enjoys physics itself. But
that doesn't mean you cannot have fun with physics.
Here is my experience accumulated in about 18 years of
physics fun. I have personally either seen it all done
by close associates or friends, or have done them
myself:

1) Take a junior-level physics course taught by a
more-or-less new woman staff with good a.s, then f.ck
her sometime before midterm comes up. If you wait
longer someone else is by then f.cking her. They're all
marriage-material so they won't be available to you or
others anytime later than that either.

2) If you have the money, take a physics course taught
by anyone who has a foreign little chick as TA for the
course, then ask her to tutor you a couple of times per
week in a public library or restaurant, any public
place other than the school. About three weeks into
this she's automatically in love with you enough to let
you f.ck her everytime you meet her outside school.
Strings made are easy to break once you're done with
her. She'll keep this as one of her sweet memories of
college time in her life.  

3) Wait until the first physics classes commence, then
peep inside them to see if you could spot a Black chick
sitting among them. That happens sometimes. Then
register in that course and f.ck the chick every single
day until she drops the course. This gives you about
four weeks of f.cking, and that's of course if you're
into f.cking Blacks.

4) Even more fun in physics? Every girl who takes
"astronomy" course is there to be f.cked. Physics or
non-physics students. I don't know why it works like a
little cute yacht with them. If they're there, they're
near-magically made available for screwing.

5) If you're lucky a girl from mainland China may teach
one of the undergraduate courses. Take the course and
begin f.cking her as soon as she decides to ask you a
couple of ordinary and general but personal questions
at the end of a class session. That's how they say, "My
choice is you to f.ck me." The only thing with them is
that they're usually extremely busy so you only get to
do quickies on them. Anywhere. Her office, her car,
right after lunch, etc. Sometimes even more than once
in a course of a day. Keep preparing well for her
course each time and do well in her quizes and exams or
you'll lose her to another student. They cannot
tolerate domb individuals and are not after the best
and sexiest in the class either.

7) Observe which one of the male students in the
physics department it is that his sister happens to
visit the department once in a while. That girl, the
sister, is there only to be f.cked by physics students.
There is not a single other reason in the world for her
to come there. If she acts reluctant/snobbish at the
beginning it means she doesn't want you to just f.ck
her, but  you to f.ck the living sh.t out of her. If
another student is already f.cking her and even if
she's "engaged" with one, you can still f.ck her as
long as she keeps showing up in the department. The
showing up stops in that part of fertile grounds for
her only after she's not available anymore.  

8) If you suddenly see that when taking the mid-term
instead of the Jewish professor himself his middle-aged
WIFE has come to conduct the exam session ("My husband
was busy for this and that, it was decided that I take
care of this!"), this means it is her one and only
chance that you f.ck her after the exam. Do that, and
do it for the benefit of mankind. It is totally up to
you to find the place for it and it will not make the
slightest difference for her as long as she is f.cked
before driving home with students' stack of exam
papers.

9) Stay away from the one female physics student that
the physics faculty is f.cking! You won't be able to
f.ck her. You may be surprized what an aging physics
professor can offer her for a f.ck. The game's simply
out and above your league. Wait until she takes her
first astronomy course. That's when she's relatively
free and willing enough for other adventures here and
there. But this may not happen while you're in that
school.

10) The surest way to f.ck sexy girls while studying
physics in USA (In Iran it's a different story, very
differnt strategies, but exact same ends) is to visit
the feminist gatherings of your school, and get
yourself into discussion with them. This is the surest
f.ck for a physics student in a U.S. university.

You are not alone in your quest. The APS and related societies are
constantly flagellating themselves, trying to figure out how to make the
curriculum interesting to students like yourself: intellectually
curious, but not too interested in learning frictionless block/Atwood
machine type problems.  It's not a simple problem, and there are good
reasons for learning the canon.

You may enjoy Jearl Walker's "The Flying Circus of Physics"- lots of
everyday physics. Another is Douglas Hofstetter's (sp?) "Godel, Escher,
Bach" or even Stuart Kauffman's "The Origins of Order".  Those last two
are not physics books per se, but introduce physical concepts in terms
of interesting problems.

Finally, there's Larry Gonick's "The Cartoon Guide to Physics", which I
found quite entertaining and well-executed, and the on-line text

http://www.motionmountain.net/

The more I dig around, the more I like this resource.

On Apr 27, 11:28 pm, mz08...@students.salisbury.edu wrote:

Physics departments typically offer several different introductory
physics courses aimed at different objectives and groups of
students. You might enjoy the calculus-oriented one better.

You might take a look at the Feynmann Lectures. They cover
a breadth of material. And for a fun book that really tests any
physicist's level of comfort with basic physical principles,
see if you could find Jearl Walker's "Flying Circus of Physics".
Example: As an ice cube melts in a water glass, what happens
to the level of the water?

                 - Randy