Hello all, I am currently taking calc 1 and falling in love with math. I plan to major in physics/engineering but have not taken a physics class yet, though I am very interested in the subject from youtube. What are some good starter books I could read now before taking my first physics class to help get some foundational knowledge on the subject.

I'm currently doing a master's degree and trying to figure out what I want to do after graduation. My long-term goal is to work in industry, preferably in a job that still involves experimental work. My bachelor's thesis was in quantum optics, and my master's thesis will be related to nanolithography. I've picked some EE courses as well. Ideally, I'd prefer not to have to deal with clients that much or be on call (the latter is pretty much a dealbreaker for me). Night shifts would actually be a plus, though that's not a must. My programming skills and chemistry knowledge are nothing to speak of, but I am optimistic that these will improve with time.

Would you recommend pursuing a PhD? For those of you with a similar background, what do you actually do day to day? How did you end up in your current role, and would you recommend it?

I have started college and my first physics course is mechanics (calculus based) I am bad at relative velocities and observer frames and my syllabus is till work and energy, I am way too cooked it feels like I am not understanding a single thing, I have a mid term exam in 5 days, there are tons of problems and it just overwhelms, how to cope up with it. Please help me

I have searched online on amazon and Flipkart but I cannot find any. Does anybody have it or someone ready to sell? Or any website can you suggest from where i can buy this book?

Hi everyone,

I am a PhD student doing both experiments and computational physics ( mostly fluid dynamicswith Boltzmann equations) and leaning towards more computational day by day.

Currently I am using Julia, I find it pretty fast and easy to use.

Do you think switching to C or C++ will be a benefit? I am asking from a research, but also emplyment in industry point of view.

I discussed with many people, mostly from the DFT area, and most of them told me that Julia slowly will take up the lead for HPC code.

What.s your opinion on this?

So… I’m not a physicist or physics student but I do nerd out on it a little bit. Forgive me if this is a dumb question or if my terminology isn’t right, but I’ve always wondered.

If my understanding of relativity is correct, the perception of time is relative to the motion of the observer, then what would time as it relates to things like the procession of the observable universe and celestial bodies, (and anything else I can’t think of or don’t know about) look like if we were truly stationary in the universe?

Like hypothetically, if our solar system, and entire galaxy were not moving through space.

Is our movement through space fast enough to make a difference? If we had (hypothetically) always been stationary, for billions upon billions of years, how different would the universe appear to be, other than the maybe obvious, like other galaxies and stars would be moving but we wouldn’t, our galaxy would’ve probably suffered a collision at some point. Stuff like that not considered. Only our understanding and perception of time, and the apparent behavior of the universe around us?

Hello everyone, I’m currently in my senior year majoring in Electrical Engineering. I wanted to know how can I get a job or what type of jobs in optics/photonics and laser science that takes in people with bachelors? I’m planning to do grad school, but I’m going to do that later in a year or two after graduation. I do have research experience in laser plasma diagnostics and never had an internship before in the industry. I wanted to apply for PhD programs, but my gpa is low for that right now and I want to use my experience and solid LOR and SOP to make it up for it. I’ve had a hard time finding roles that pay decent for optical test engineer roles that doesn’t require a PhD or 5+ years of experience. Any options that I should look into? I’m geographically from Minnesota, so finding a photonics jobs here is very hard, I’m more than open to relocate (preferably in the coast (northeast, pacific or mountains).

This may be a silly question and you are okay to flame me.

How much has physics progressed over the last 70 years?

I am curious would someone with a masters in theoretical physics know more about physics than Oppenheimer

I am not saying they are smarter than Oppenheimer ( although some may? )

I get how mathematically divergence of curl and curl of divergence are 0 but why doesn't curl of a vector field diverge and why does gradient of a vector field not curl/swirl.

I realize that an object rotating in space is forcing charged particles to accelerate and thus generates electromagnetic waves, even if the loss of momentum is miniscule.

Do rotating objects, no matter how small of relatively little mass, generate gravitational waves? Or are there principles that limit the energy that can be carried away by gravity, the way electromagnetic waves are quantized?

Hello, I am looking for an experienced person (and not an AI) to help me understand a phenomenon of second harmonic generation (GSH) by frequency doubling. My pump laser has unstable polarisation and, with an injected power of 9 W, I only get 0.8 W of converted power. However, with the same assembly but a different pump laser, I get 1.5W in a single pass. I am not sure of the impact of polarisation on this result. I measured a polarisation extinction rate (PER) of 14 dB, but as it is unstable, it is difficult to determine its influence. If anyone has any advice, a theoretical explanation would be welcome. 🙏

Hey guys!

I am finding it a bit hard to understand how these work together.

Particularly, i cannot process how something rotating very slowly can still have points on it surface go at 1640kmph (earth).

Like if an object translated at that speed it would look insane , but I can only imagine earth rotating very slow which makes it hard for me to believe that we are going at 1640 kmph.

I'm looking for explanations or something that could make it easier for me to grasp this

I've always been interested in the natural sciences on some level, but I've never studied them formally nor read about them on any serious level. I've been reading philosophy (mostly Aristotle, Hegel, a bit of Kant, though I find him rather boring) for a while, but I've come to believe that I have a very one-sided education and that I'm ignorant about the natural sciences (physics, biology and so on). I'd like to remedy this fault by beginning to read about physics, which one could consider, along with mathematics, as a kind of foundation in science or something close to it.

I dislike philosophers who make grand philosophical claims, staking their 'systems' on one or another currently popular physics field. On a closer inspection, their work is often based on misunderstandings or contentious reasoning. Quantum physics is probably that field which is most referred to by all kinds of mystics, who try to find places for (in my view) naive Cartesian understandings of consciousness, god, etc.

Another thing that encourages me to try and understand this field is my disappointment with the humanities and the social sciences, much of which seems to be overly pretentious and made of straw. So, on some level, I detest my own background. I value physicists, chemists, medical researchers and biologists far more than social scientists, 'critical theorists' and followers of all kinds of fashionable 'theory'. One of the few fields in the humanities I do value is philosophy, although I see it as more of a historical foundation on which you build your understanding of other topics and that most issues within philosophy are completely irrelevant today, apart from logic and other such things.

What I want is to get not a popular science understanding of one phenomena or another, or a series of isolated facts, such curiosities. I'd like to get something deeper, which is understanding. To make it a bit more clear, what I want is to understand this field on a deeper level. I've no practical use for any of this, but I would like to understand the world and as much of it as possible. Like I said, I also have the feeling that my understanding is far too one-sided. I don't seek a career in this field.

What would one do to achieve this? So far, with other interests of mine, I simply have relied on textbooks (for learning languages, a big interest of mine), secondary literature (primarily for philosophy) and primary literature.

I'm posting here because this game is all about physics. As a game developer, I created this app to help with testing specific scenarios with in-game physics. In the process, I've discovered that this is almost a game in itself - and I find myself spending time just experimenting with what I can do with this pile of little objects (cubes or spheres). If this were a "real" game, I suppose it would be a physics sandbox where you drop lots of small objects into the environment and then apply various forces to them - creating mesmerizing displays and patterns.

Anyway, I'm just trying to find out if anyone would play something like this.

It’s a flashlight shining on fog, pics on iPhone 17. Why are the droplets linear?