Large Hardon Collider

[Woozie]

I hate when people use hard-to-draw greek letters. Or greek letters that look very similar to commonly-used normal letters (though the notation varies, so maybe in their countries they don't use x's and u's as much). What I really hate is using the letter "o" for any reason at all whatsoever. I have to draw a bar over them to distinguish them. But that's confusing if I'm using matrices or vectors. I could also draw a line through my zeros, but then they look like the empty set.

Also, I can't tell my u's and v's apart. I draw them exactly the same.

[Max™]

Yeah, I hate sub/superscript mu and nu, which just gets worse since some equations use a v for velocity, and mu or nu for quantities alongside it.

[Kaylia]

Schrodinger was a dick. Didn't he realize that uppercase Psi is really annoying to drag through a problem and that slanged, look suspiciously like x's? Total dick.

There is worse than the upper case psi. I'm literally unable to write down some problems on paper now because the alphabet and summation with 10 millions index are impossible to write.

[Penthesilea]

thought of you all when I got this facebook posting.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nas...ill-god,19263/

NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God

February 23, 2011 | ISSUE 47•08
Article Tools

WASHINGTON—After more than five decades of tireless work, brave exploration, and technological innovation aimed at a single objective, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Wednesday that it had finally completed its mission to find and kill God.

NASA officials celebrate after finally locating and murdering the Supreme Being.

"I am ecstatic to tell you all today that we have beheld the awesome visage of the supreme architect of the cosmos, and we have murdered Him," jubilant administrator Charles Bolden said after being drenched with champagne by other celebrating NASA employees. "There have been innumerable setbacks, missteps, and hardships over the past 50 years, but we always stayed true to our ultimate goal and we never gave up."

"We finally got the son of a bitch!" Bolden continued. "He's dead! God is dead!"....

continued at the link

[Eliseos]

Lower case Xi is the worst. Whenever I had to use it (rarely, thank god), I just kind of scribbled something.

And for psi, I've found writing it this way works well and fast (spoilering due to large):

Spoiler: show

[Lochnessmonster]

I just wanted to thanks those that contribute to this thread. I'm currently studying aeronautical engineering and decided to pursue a minor in physics due in part to your enthusiasm. I'd also like to thank those that share my hatred for confusing Greek letters. I feel like I require a decoder ring to manage all of the aerodynamics and physics symbols. Xi, Psi, and Zeta can go and die in a fire.

[Eliseos]

I wish more colleges would have had an aerospace engineering degree, or that I would have thought to apply to schools that offer it. It would have been my major instead of CS/Physics. Now all I can do to help create badass fighter jets is write software for the embedded systems on it. Sad that my dream job now involves me writing software.

Edit: Thinking about it, I wish I would have been a lot less dumb deciding on my major in high school, or my guidance counselor had done more than just sign off on the classes I was taking. What I thought was computer science at the time turned out to be computer engineering (I wanted to develop computer chips, which I guess is why I'm minoring in EE), and I pretty much hated my first programming class. Talking with a lot of my EE frens, they also want to go the route of embedded software, well I guess designed the embedded system and writing code for it are sort of the same.

[Tagus]

Also off topic-ish, but does anybody know why the fuck the Chalk River Reactor keeps going down?

[Mizango]

I just wanted to thanks those that contribute to this thread. I'm currently studying aeronautical engineering and decided to pursue a minor in physics due in part to your enthusiasm. I'd also like to thank those that share my hatred for confusing Greek letters. I feel like I require a decoder ring to manage all of the aerodynamics and physics symbols. Xi, Psi, and Zeta can go and die in a fire.

Hey whats up man, nice to meet you. Well you've got to find people that have the same passion and can think on the same level as you, and that's what we do here. Believe it or not we are all actual friends and actually help each other out is different ways. Post more, drop ideas and articles as your leisure. Im always glad to meet like-minded people considering there arent many of us out there lol. We're cool folks man, we hope to see more of you around

[Mizango]

I wish more colleges would have had an aerospace engineering degree, or that I would have thought to apply to schools that offer it. It would have been my major instead of CS/Physics. Now all I can do to help create badass fighter jets is write software for the embedded systems on it. Sad that my dream job now involves me writing software.

Edit: Thinking about it, I wish I would have been a lot less dumb deciding on my major in high school, or my guidance counselor had done more than just sign off on the classes I was taking. What I thought was computer science at the time turned out to be computer engineering (I wanted to develop computer chips, which I guess is why I'm minoring in EE), and I pretty much hated my first programming class. Talking with a lot of my EE frens, they also want to go the route of embedded software, well I guess designed the embedded system and writing code for it are sort of the same.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I too got bad advice from a counselor as well, but i was young and didnt really know how to trust in myself 100%. When I enrolled at USC I initially was going to major in Microbiology or Marine biology, but I second guessed myself because I have always been a pure natural at computers and and bit of a wiz kid when I was younger, but my counselor gave me that whole "Its hard for someone like us (he was black too) to major in science and math and make something of ourselves, the white man doesnt want you to succeed etc". Yeah, bullshit huh.

Found out a my junior year at USC that he was in a nationalist black movement back in the 60s and was all about "fuck whitey", so I ended up sticking with and getting my BS in Computer engineering/Networking. Which is why I am currently going back not taking what I should have in the first place. Then again I probably wouldnt being doing Cosmology right now, but id be in the Science field in some capacity at least. Oh well, you take the good with the bad and move it on along I suppose. But I feel you on that one bro, big time lol.

[Ferion]

If it's not weird to be asking, I'm just kind of curious what everyone's current career or plans are. I'm still fairly new here so I thought it would be kind of interesting to get to know people's stories since I probably wouldn't visit BG forums nearly as much as I do without this thread. I'm an undergrad at Rutgers in NJ studying math and econ. Honestly I was pretty terrible at math and like most people hated it while growing up. This was until I got to college and took my first Calc course and I haven't looked back since. I'm considering going to grad school in econ, but I'm not really sure since the more I work with my current research advisor the more he turns me off to the idea.

I hate when people use hard-to-draw greek letters. Or greek letters that look very similar to commonly-used normal letters (though the notation varies, so maybe in their countries they don't use x's and u's as much). What I really hate is using the letter "o" for any reason at all whatsoever. I have to draw a bar over them to distinguish them. But that's confusing if I'm using matrices or vectors. I could also draw a line through my zeros, but then they look like the empty set.

This. My professor for multi-variable calc loved to use "x" to denote vectors, so when we got to cross products my notes were very annoying to read. I'd see things like: "We can show the vector perpendicular to x and y by: x x y"

[Woozie]

He doesn't drawn an arrow or bar over the vectors?

As for career plans, I'm no longer sure what I want to do. Originally I wanted to be a professor in theoretical or particle physics, then I switched to condensed matter or nuclear, now I'm considering medical physics or something.

I think my situation is typical. It seems that most physics majors aren't sure what they want to do. Except Miz. He wants to do astrology and cosmetology.

[Woozie]

Dat nigga wanna do hair...wtf....

[Ferion]

He doesn't drawn an arrow or bar over the vectors?

He did in the beginning, and then that kind of stopped happening until people started complaining about it. Most people never went to class though cause he had such a heavy Russian accent. I think the average on the first exam was a little lower than a 50.

[Mizango]

If it's not weird to be asking, I'm just kind of curious what everyone's current career or plans are. I'm still fairly new here so I thought it would be kind of interesting to get to know people's stories since I probably wouldn't visit BG forums nearly as much as I do without this thread.

Cool, ill start. As you read, I have a BS in Comptuer Engineering from the University of South Carolina (Eli went there as well before transferring, once a Gamecock always a Gamecock!). I also attended and got all of my Cisco, Novell, Oracle, Networking and Server certifications, labs and degree from Saint Louis University in St Louis Missouri. Ive worked for IBM, Microsoft, Global Telecom and infrastructure Companies and done freelance work. Pays very well, paid my dues and am currently back in grad school trying to follow my true calling which is Astronomy. Cosmology to be specific, yes there is a HUGE difference. Think of it like this, Astronomy is the study of a tree in a random forest; as to where Cosmology is the overal study of the afore mentioned forest containing said tree.

I've always LOVED Science and Math, but science moreso since it works off of your natural inquisitiveness. I am not your typical nerd though lol. I am very physical, I love working out, running and do so daily. I played basketball, baseball, football and ran track in HS and also ran track and attended USC on a full track scholarship. I was a sprinter, not some distance runner lol. I am married and have a 10 year old that is a budding engineer/physicist as she is taking advanced studies in both in school. A cool fact about me, Physicist, Author and PBS Nova host Neil deGrasse Tyson is actually an adviser of mine and is I guess someone you can call a "friend"? I say that only because he we talk every few months because he is genuinely infatuated and interested in my daughters schooling and how she is doing in math and science.

The past 2 years for her birthday he has sent something, with well wishes, words of encouragement and autographs. Carl Sagan is the single largest science influence I have ever had in my life. If it were not for him and his Cosmos programs that instilled this love for the Universe, there is no telling where or what id do. Some of my favorite authors/physicists are Brian Greene, Ronald Mallett, João Magueijo, Lee Smolin (small doses), Alan Guth, Clifford Johnson, Hans Bethe and the usuals.. Schrodinger, Feynman, Bohr, Newton, Hawking, Einstein and Fermi.

And yes, Im 100% Black. I mean I only get asked that 1000 times a day lol.

[Mizango]

Dat nigga wanna do hair...wtf....

Bahahahaha. Sigged.

[Mizango]

Oh and Woozie and I have similar backgrounds when it comes to our families, growing up in rough neighborhoods, all the way up to making it out. Because of this, I am probably closer to him than anyone on these boards. We talk off of BG too, he were supposed to kick it this summer but nooooooooooooooo, he had to go an cancel...

j/k lol

[Eliseos]

(Eli went there as well before transferring, once a Gamecock always a Gamecock!).

Brofist.

Anyway, I attend UW-Milwaukee, dual majoring in computer science and physics, minoring in EE. I've had two internships so far, the first being for a year and a half developing web applications in Java for a health care system in Wisconsin. Now I intern at Fidelity Information Services helping to develop software for ATMs, its mostly a bridge between the banks using it and our servers. I'll graduate in May, and most likely be hired full time at Fidelity. I plan on working there for a few years, getting some experience, then I'll try applying to places like Lockheed-Martin etc. since I'd like to get in the aerospace industry as mentioned above. I guess I decided to dual major with physics as I've always enjoyed the subject, and it may or may not help me get into aerospace. If anything, it'll be something that looks good on my resume.

[Woozie]

Yeah, Miz and I are probably long lost twin brothers or something. We have so much in common it's insane.

[Cruzizzle]

Crux gotchu!

Reposting from photography thread so you guys don't miss out. This is my first attempt at imaging Orion. Spoiler for size.

Spoiler: show

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8246/img0890ew.jpg
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/1185/img0890d.jpg