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How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist

208 points| tokenadult | 10 years ago |staff.science.uu.nl | reply

75 comments

order
[+] mindcrime|10 years ago|reply
I love this kind of site. Not that you can't scour up the content yourself using Google, but here's the thing... when you're trying to "teach yourself" something complex, one of the challenges you run into (in my experience) is understanding the order of the dependencies for prerequisites and sub-topics. And nothing is more frustrating than trying to read a book or a paper and feeling totally lost because you're missing something that you should have learned first, but you don't even know exactly what the "something" is. :-(

As someone who considers himself something of an autodidact and who is always trying to learn new stuff, I really appreciate a resource that can point at a bunch of stuff and say (even in an approximate sense) "do this in this order". It really does make a difference.

[+] chestervonwinch|10 years ago|reply
Bingo. This is in complete contrast to visiting wikipedia where, for example, if I go to any mathematical concept, I seem to tumble down a series of holes that usually falls out somewhere much more abstract that what I need (usually topology). This is not to say topology is not important, but clearly becoming an expert topologist before learning wavelets (for example) would not be the most efficient way to learn the latter.
[+] ioeu|10 years ago|reply
I totally agree! If anybody knows of something similar for artificial general intelligence I'm all ears, currently in the process of reading up on it.
[+] bronz|10 years ago|reply
The most profound thing that the internet can do for the world is create a single monolithic repository of documents that is designed to take a dedicated reader from basic principles of math to a high degree of understanding in any subject. This is such an easy task compared to all of the other projects that happen on the internet, it is astonishing that we don't have anything like it yet. Wikipedia comes close. Khan Academy might become what I just described after they add more content. But nothing really hits the nail on the head yet. If Facebook spent a few billion on it then we would have it. It's so fucking simple. I would trade in Instagram many, many times over in exchange for such a repository. It is one of the easiest things to do and out of all the things we could do has the greatest impact on society and yet it has not been done. Amazing.
[+] abstrakraft|10 years ago|reply
I think you drastically underestimate the difficulty of putting together quality curricula.
[+] euyyn|10 years ago|reply
There was an attempt to start that in Wikiversity, but it's been very very slow.
[+] musgravepeter|10 years ago|reply
The most important part of this is to do the problems!

After a PhD in theoretical physics then 20 years as a s/w developer I decided to get some of my chops back. You can read and nod about stuff but until you face a blank sheet of paper you don't know if you really understood.

+1 for Penrose's "Road to Reality"

Also a huge fan of Eric Poisson's lectures (basically free textbooks) http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/poisson/research/notes.html

Short description of getting my chops back: http://nbodyphysics.com/blog/2015/02/28/learn-physics-with-t...

[+] rifung|10 years ago|reply
I'm happy to see that there is someone who is trying to help those who don't want to or can't go the traditional route of undergrad => grad school. Certainly I'm sure there are many others like me who have a strong, but amateur interest in a subject. Here I mean amateur in the sense that it is unpaid and done only out of love, as opposed to some measure of skill.

Sadly I have no intention of studying theoretical physics. If anyone could point me towards something for theoretical computer science and algorithms I would be most grateful

[+] Someone|10 years ago|reply
Aside: that phrase "someone who is trying to help" makes me wonder whether you know that _this_ someone is a Nobel laureate (shared with Veltman in 1999), as he casually mentions in the text.
[+] emmelaich|10 years ago|reply 

    Greek letters are used a lot. Learn their names,
    otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving
    an oral presentation
One thing that surprised the heck out of me is that we don't pronounce Greek letters like the Greeks do.

Example: tau sounds something like taf in Greek.

(that's all I got :-)

[+] titanomachy|10 years ago|reply
I speak reasonably fluent Greek (family language), and took a course in Classical Greek when I was in school. My professor explained that the pronunciations used in mathematics (tau, beta, mu...) differ from the Modern Greek versions (taf, veeta, mee...) because the former are the (conjectured) pronunciations used in the classical language. A large source of evidence for the pronunciation of Classical Greek is the transliteration of Greek words in to other languages during that period, especially into Latin. The whole language is pronounced very differently, not just the alphabet.

As a side note, that class was absurdly easy because I already knew almost all the vocabulary. The classical grammar is quite different though, and more complicated.

[+] Luc|10 years ago|reply
'Tau' is the ancient Greek way. My classical languages teacher was able to converse in ancient Greek and Latin, but couldn't make head or tails of modern Greek when he visited.
[+] random778|10 years ago|reply
Is it pronounced the same in early and modern Greek?
[+] lawpoop|10 years ago|reply
Has anyone here ever read or worked through Hrabovsky and Susskind's _The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics_? Same premise as this, I gather, but a whole book.
[+] kriro|10 years ago|reply
For anyone who wants to read this. The book was rebranded. It's "Classical Mechanics - TTM" (this used to be called TTM only) now and there's also a "Quantum Mechanics - TTM". I have both of them on my nightstand but only browsed so far. Seems good at first glance. Susskind's Stanford classes for laypeople were great so I expect the books to be good as well :)
[+] jarvist|10 years ago|reply
The TTM books grew out of the Stanford Continuing Studies courses by Susskind. These were recorded by Stanford and uploaded to Youtube: http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses

There is very much more content in these lectures than is covered in the two books.

[+] mindcrime|10 years ago|reply
I started it, not finished yet. My overall impression is favorable based on the part I've worked through so far.
[+] gohrt|10 years ago|reply
H&S's book is an intro text. This page is a listing of many texts.
[+] neutronicus|10 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, the section on Plasma Physics is rather sparse.

Introduction to Plasma Physics by Francis F. Chen and Fundamentals of Plasma Physics by Paul Bellan are good next-step texts, and this crowd in particular might enjoy Birdsall and Langdon's Plasma Physics Via Computer Simulation

Also on the computational topic, Kane S. Yee's 1966 paper "Numerical Solution..."

[+] mkadlec|10 years ago|reply
Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like me)
[+] mgalka|10 years ago|reply
Same here. It's actually a really good post!

Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif

Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?

[+] cicloid|10 years ago|reply
As a Philomath, this site is an oasis on the Internet. True, you may be able to grasp what this page tries to accomplish with enough determination.

But, someone sharing their knowledge and path in a no-nonsense approach, sure helps a lot.

Are there any other similar guides for other fields?

[+] rpgmaker|10 years ago|reply
I'm personally interested in a guide like this for economics... if anyone knows of one. It can be a book I guess...
[+] sawwit|10 years ago|reply
Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native English speaker confirm?
[+] tokenadult|10 years ago|reply
The author of the submitted website is a native speaker of Dutch, but his English looks fine to me (a native speaker of English). I think his choice of emphasis, which I didn't try to reproduce when I submitted the website here on Hacker News, makes the point that people can become mere amateurs or even cranks[1] about theoretical physics unless they prepare carefully. I have seen a few examples of theoretical physics cranks[2] over the years.

[1] I mean "crank" in the second sense shown at the Merriam-Webster dictionary site.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crank

[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/in-physics-t...

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/01/10/a-profound-misu...

[+] dchapp|10 years ago|reply
I agree that use of "good" is questionable here. One would think that without the skills mentioned, one wouldn't be a theoretical physicist at all. (Is every person who lacks these skills a "bad theoretical physicist"? Only in a vacuous sense.)

That said, I think we should interpret "how to become a good theoretical physicist" as "how to gain the competencies that are expected of s theoretical physicist."

[+] iorrus|10 years ago|reply
I am not sure that you will become a 'good' theoretical physicist after reading those. (I have knowledge of most of the items he mentions) You will have a good overview of many mathematical tools that are used in physics but that's about it. Personally I prefer to read the stuff the 'bad' theoretical physicists write. Read Penrose or Bohm for what 'good' theoretical physicists think of existing orthodoxies and their many failings.
[+] csguy22|10 years ago|reply
That is something else, really love this idea. Is there anything _exactly_ like that but for Computer Science?
[+] dstyrb|10 years ago|reply
I find it strange that no one in this discussion seems to notice the dripping sarcasm...
[+] oafitupa|10 years ago|reply
What do you mean? :(
[+] santaclaus|10 years ago|reply
I'm surprised to see no explicit mention of differential geometry.
[+] ajkjk|10 years ago|reply
Agreed. But there are many implicit mentions. Lots of physicists pick it up on the side in other subjects, which probably isn't ideal.
[+] mhartl|10 years ago|reply
Differential geometry starts getting important once you hit General Relativity, and any good GR text will cover it thoroughly.
[+] timwaagh|10 years ago|reply
this is a great site. it really makes a good case why no one should want to be a (good) physicist. reading this stuff takes decades i should think.
[+] Synaesthesia|10 years ago|reply
Well I want to be a good physicist and I appreciate that it will take me years, maybe decades of reading. That's what's necessary to catch up to what we know. It's tough going but equally rewarding to learn.
[+] reillyse|10 years ago|reply
This is awesome. I like his no-nonsense approach.