Large Hardon Collider

[Eliseos]

What's the class schedule for a summer calc class? I took second semester physics (intro of e&m, optics) last summer and it was fucking horrible. Four days a week for over three hours each day.

[Woozie]

Do you have any idea what you want to do with your physics degree yet? Are you planning on going into a specific field of physics or specific profession.

[Eliseos]

At one of our job fairs, there was an aeronautics corporation that developed electrical components and software for things like the F-22 and the space shuttle. Something along those lines would be badass, since I'd be using both majors and my minor (which is ideally what I want to do).

Another thing is either doing some programming for nuclear or fusion reactors I think would be fun, but it sounds like Kryssan would try to steer me from there if I want a life. Possibly getting into quantum computing, but as of right now that would be more a research area than an engineering area.

If all else fails and I can't find anything I want to get in to by next year, it will at least be a resume booster.

EDIT: I'm going to start looking for something close to the end of this year, since I'll be graduating in May next year. I'm sure my physics advisors will at least know of some places that hire the engineering double majors.

[BerenTebogo]

Something horrible like 5 hours a day twice a week or something. Whatever, ill get over it lol.

@woozie: astro, probably. Quantuum research doesn't interest me in a big way, I just like getting the tl;dr of the progress being made. Something about astro that I really want to get my hands on and turn things inside-out and upside-down until it all makes sense.

[Woozie]

Eli, you're lucky you're graduating a year from now. I don't graduate until 2012, and even then I wont be done with school yet.

Edit: Astro was my original goal when I first decided to go into physics, but eventually I moved towards theoretical or particle, and now I'm on Solid State.

So with Astrophysics, I'm guessing you want to be a professor. Or at least I hope so, since that's all you can do with that degree.

[BerenTebogo]

Eli, you're lucky you're graduating a year from now. I don't graduate until 2012, and even then I wont be done with school yet.

I plan to do a joint undergrad-masters program where I'm going now, should shave a semester or two off my graduate degree. I want to go up to the phd level ideally though, and id be done with that solmewhere around 2018 or later, lol.

[Woozie]

I plan to do a joint undergrad-masters program where I'm going now, should shave a semester or two off my graduate degree. I want to go up to the phd level ideally though, and id be done with that solmewhere around 2018 or later, lol.

You don't really have a choice but to get a PhD if you want a career in astrophysics. Being done 6 years from now is pretty good. I still have little clue when I'll be completely done.

I'm glad you're dedicated to doing what you like. I'm going to sell out and go to applied physics for the money and jobs

[Eliseos]

Honestly, I don't know if I'm lucky or not, with the economy how it is. So many of my friends from South Carolina haven't found a job yet, and they graduated anywhere from last year to May of this year. A lot of them just decided to go to grad school since it's better than nothing.

On a completely unrelated note, I am stuck on a thermo question on this take home exam and it's driving me nuts. I know exactly what I'm doing (I think?) but the equations just aren't working out. We're supposed to find dS/dT and constant x, and I've been using the chain rule to get dS/dT in terms of variables that are known (we aren't supposed to calculate the entropy until the next question, right now it's just heat capacity) but one of the partials I'm getting involves constant entropy God I hate this class lol.

[Woozie]

Oh yeah, I guess this is a really bad time to be graduating. I'm lucky, I wont be able to get a job regardless so I don't have to worry about the economy D:

[BerenTebogo]

You don't really have a choice but to get a PhD if you want a career in astrophysics. Being done 6 years from now is pretty good. I still have little clue when I'll be completely done.

I'm glad you're dedicated to doing what you like. I'm going to sell out and go to applied physics for the money and jobs

Caiti will have a solid career long before I'm done, which is one of the few reasons I'm able to go after this. Its just us though and always will be, no kids, no attchments to family, etc. We really don't need /that/ much money. Really, $40,000 a year combined would let us live like families that take in $100k combined. For now its FAFSA and later on down the road it'll have to be scholarships, but what good is money if you're miserable, right?

[Eliseos]

God damn it. I just spent the past two hours trying to prove some variable is independent of the wrong variable. I want my two hours back please.

[BerenTebogo]

God damn it. I just spent the past two hours trying to prove some variable is independent of the wrong variable. I want my two hours back please.

I hate that. I don't think any level of education will prevent me from occasionally copying down half of one problem and half of the next and trying to solve it for 1hr+

[Eliseos]

Lol seriously. The question says "Prove that A is independent of x", and I thought x said T, because the problem statement says Cx = AT where A is independent of T

Also, no amount of education will make it so I can do simple math. I transpose negative signs in the weirdest spots.

[Kryssan]

Lol seriously. The question says "Prove that A is independent of x", and I thought x said T, because the problem statement says Cx = AT where A is independent of T

Also, no amount of education will make it so I can do simple math. I transpose negative signs in the weirdest spots.

My reliance on a calculator during HS/College is one reason why you'll always find me carrying that sliderule around nowadays. If you screw up the math on it the answer you receive is either off scale or screwed up too, lol.


While we're complaining about past choices though, can someone explain to me how I went from a degree in fusion and plasma research to thermal fission PWR operations? Hate my life. The only thing that keeps me interested in nuclear power nowadays is knowing that the stuff I'm doing now will one day be nothing more than a factual, emotionless blurb in a textbook. One of these days I need to finish that degree, or something, too. Hopefully by the end of this year I'll have things sorted enough to start going back to college - should be fun, its only been 8 years now since I touched a textbook that wasn't a technical manual or operations manual. Kinda worried if I don't get to it soon the credits I had before will just vanish. Sucks that Rensselaer got rid of their satellite campus out here, going to have to do stuff online only.

[Max™]

If what we're working on backfires, we get pencils and books embedded in our bodies.

Not likely to provide super powers.

If your shit kerpops, you turn into The Inkryssable Hulk!

[Omniyoji]

Excuse my lack of understanding of the various sciences (and for going off topic). I love it but I'm not very into it. The other day I was thinking about women which then lead to time and then finally turned into deep space pondering.

I was wondering (and I'm oh so certain this must've been discussed here) if time did not exist then the universe would also not exist and all that would remain is the infinite vast empty black space correct? I recall reading (not sure if here) that if time didn't exist everything would happen at once or something along those lines. I thought time in space = changes and if changes aren't happening then time isn't present. Am I correct or way off?

The answer was bothering me that day but I didn't have time (lol) to look it up and just remembered now :D

[Kaylia]

Excuse my lack of understanding of the various sciences (and for going off topic). I love it but I'm not very into it. The other day I was thinking about women which then lead to time and then finally turned into deep space pondering.

I was wondering (and I'm oh so certain this must've been discussed here) if time did not exist then the universe would also not exist and all that would remain is the infinite vast empty black space correct? I recall reading (not sure if here) that if time didn't exist everything would happen at once or something along those lines. I thought time in space = changes and if changes aren't happening then time isn't present. Am I correct or way off?

The answer was bothering me that day but I didn't have time (lol) to look it up and just remembered now :D

You can stop thinking right after the "if time didn't exist" part. None of the answers would make sense from our perspective, and no physicist could give you a serious answer. In a place where time doesn't exist, nothing we know will make sense. You might as well divide by 0 or imagine the infinity.


What you probably heard is that when you move at the speed of light away from something else (like a photon), time dilatation/space compression will be infinite, and everything will happen instantly. It's a basic consequence of special relativity. Time always exists, it's just that in certain scenario, it will be equals to 0.

In general relativity, time is just another dimension of spacetime (a distance on the time axis if you want), and spacetime need matter to exist. Because of this, you can't have an empty universe, because the moment you have matter, it will be surrounded by space time. If there was no matter, there is no space or time, and nothing exists.

[Woozie]

What Kaylia said. No time = no physics (and no universe).

You can't have the concept of matter, energy, and interactions without the concept of time. Also note that we couldn't have vast empty space because it took time for space to get that way. Or, if you look at it mathematically, time is intricately linked with space (which is why they just call it spacetime now). You can't have the concept of traveling through one without the concept of traveling through the other. So no time = no space. Asking about a universe with no time dimensions is like asking about a universe with no spacial dimensions.

[Omniyoji]

Thanks guys I have a better understanding now.

For j00:

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s.../manafonut.jpg

[Marius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVDmjnCQ1g4

i'll just leave this here