I am reading three online resources in parallel – on the history and the basics of computing, computer science, software engineering, and the related culture and ‘philosophy’. An accidental combination I find most enjoyable. Joel on Software: Joel Spolsky’s blog – a collection of classic essays. What every developer needs to know about Unicode. New terms…
Tag: Self-Study
Learning General Relativity
Math blogger Joseph Nebus does another A – Z series of posts, explaining technical terms in mathematics. He asked readers for their favorite pick of things to be covered in this series, and I came up with General Covariance. Which he laid out in this post – in his signature style, using neither equations nor…
On Learning
Some years ago I was busy with projects that required a lot of travelling but I also needed to stay up-to-date with latest product features and technologies. When a new operating system was released a colleague asked how I could do that – without having time for attending trainings. Without giving that too much thought, and having my…
“Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory”
As other authors of science blogs have pointed out: Most popular search terms are submitted by students. So I guess it is not the general public who is interested in: the theory of gyroscopes, (theory of) microwaves, (theory of) heat pumps, (theory of) falling slinkies, or the Coriolis force. I believe that these search terms…
Learning Physics, Metaphors, and Quantum Fields
In my series on Quantum Field Theory I wanted to document my own learning endeavors but it has turned into a meta-contemplation on the ‘explain-ability’ of theoretical physics. Initially I had been motivated by a comment David Tong made in his introductory lecture: Comparing different QFT books he states that Steven Weinberg‘s books are hard reads because at…
May the Force Field Be with You: Primer on Quantum Mechanics and Why We Need Quantum Field Theory
As Feynman explains so eloquently – and yet in a refreshingly down-to-earth way – understanding and learning physics works like this: There are no true axioms, you can start from anywhere. Your physics knowledge is like a messy landscape, built from different interconnected islands of insights. You will not memorize them all, but you need…
Space Balls, Baywatch and the Geekiness of Classical Mechanics
This is the first post in my series about Quantum Field Theory. What a let-down: I will just discuss classical mechanics. There is a quantum mechanics, and in contrast there is good old classical, Newtonian mechanics. The latter is a limiting case of the former. So there is some correspondence between the two, and there are rules…
And Now for Something Completely Different: Quantum Fields!
Do I miss assignments and exams? Definitely not, and I am now – finally, really, absolutely – determined to complete another program I had set for myself about 2-3 years ago. I had not been able to pull it off in addition to being a moonlighting student. Since about 10 years I have been recycling my physics knowledge on…
elkemental Force 