Soup Veeky Forums I was just wondering what you guys do for a living. Being a science board, I assume a good deal of you are scientists. Have you made any contributions? are you still studying? Do we have any phd-fags here?
I'm a physics/astrophysics student currently trying to fight my way through my 3rd year exams. Hope to be accepted into the masters program after this year.
Third year as well here (tfw finals week). Haven't contributed yet but am trying to get something published soon in biochemical physics. I'll know in a couple of weeks. What are you trying to do with your masters?
Bio. Chemical. Fucking. Physics.
That sounds genuinely sweet af man. Hows the degree treating you?
Yeah my exam diet is brutal this year. gor 4 exams in a row at one point!
Veeky Forums is shit get out before it's too late
I'm graduating with a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology (hopefully next spring), with a minor in physics because I want to pursue biophysics. I really like it, but it's such a struggle trying to decide if I want to enter a PhD program or get a masters and go into industry.
Fuck, four exams blows. What physics exams are you taking? I'm just getting to quantum physics next semester.
Why are you still here? Do you have any science prospects/achievements?
Yeah immunology was my second degree choice. Industry probably pays better, but if you're really into a subject, then I'd go for PhD man.
I'm taking Electromagnetic Theory I (did the exam yesterday, wasn't bad), Mathematical Methods I (exam is tomorrow), Stellar Structure and Evolution (the morning after MM), Waves and Diffraction (this blows donkey dick), High Energy Astrophysics (not as cool as it sounds, but OP pic related), Thermal Physics, Circuits and Systems and Quantum Physics. The last four are the day after one another.
In my QM course, they always put things in terms of chemical potentials and stuff. No surprise you're taking this course.
>those courses
Ho Li Fok. Good luck dude. Better you than me haha. Immunology is awesome. I took bacteriology and immunology as upper level electives last semester and really enjoyed them. As with all biology though, it's too qualitative for my liking.
Good to know about quantum physics. I've taken two chemical physics courses so far which contained a modest amount of quantum/statistical mechanics so I'm hoping I fair well having been exposed to a little bit of it. Any advice?
OP there are hardly any scientists on here, about 90% of this board are dropouts, high schoolers, or first years looking for help with single variable calculus. Like you should get out while you can.
It should only third year and above that are allowed to post.
Yeah qualitative courses do kinda annoy me, but it sounds like you are aiming at understanding the quantitative processes behind it all, so then you don't have to just accept everything like some sociology major.
I've got a couple of biochemistry and immunology textbooks that I read from time to time. Still interested haha.
For quantum, you just need to make sure your math is on point. Mostly stuff to do with mathematical descriptions of waves. But its quite different from general wave mathematics because, no surprise, you are treating everything with quantum equations. Schrodinger's equation is the main thing you need to understand for QM.
But yeah, most of the time it's just applying the Schrodinger equation to different simplified situations. But luckily for you most (if not all) of these simplified situations can represent chemical interactions.
Seems I may have caught myself a non-dropout/1st year. What do you do user?
Current PhD Student in Microbiology/Molecular Genetics.
You really have no idea what lies ahead of you if you divide your possible pathways as PhD or "Industry" There is a glut of highly educated STEM persons in the US and the chances of getting any job that wont deadend after 5 years require advanced degrees and masters degrees in most SM disciplines are few and far between and are rarely paid for unlike PhD.
If you want to get into a PhD program of any repute you literally have ZERO chance without any research experience. Seriously the degree and classes are weighed at maybe 20% and research experience is 70%
Thanks a lot man. I'll brush up my maths this summer. The last math course I took was vector/multivariate calculus almost two years ago fuck lmao. Anyway, off to study. Best of luck to you on your tests.
>it should only be [my current level] and above that are allowed to post
Third year like you. EE/minor in math. I would like to have more threads like yours but truth be told it never picks up enough momentum or it gets detailed. I just wish Veeky Forums could be like /diy/ sometimes, that's all I ask for in this life.
My point is most students, across several majors, I've talked to don't really get into their subjects until third year is over. But first and second years on Veeky Forums like to talk like they know the subjects they are learning. Give or take a couple really smart kids who advance early on I just want Veeky Forums to get better. It's just been aweful lately
For what it's worth, I don't think you're wrong. I'm just poking fun at you. I think the really big problem is that the board is overrun with high schoolers asking for school and career advice, and then first year college students answering with horrible advice and flinging shit about their majors. Veeky Forums hasn't been any fun to browse lately.
To contribute to the thread, I'm a math PhD student. Most of what people post about studying math on here is complete bullshit.
Well at least you understand. I just find it more fun when masters and PhD students answer questions since they know what they are talking about, and sometimes the shitposting can be of higher quality.
This board is full of second rate Math/physics/engineering majors who just ended up getting jobs in software. Hence the high levels of salt to CS majors.
I thought about switching to math for some time last year. But eventually I decided I didn't have the motivation for it like I do for physics. Studying Laplace and Fourier transforms just now, as a mathfag, could you possibly tell me if this is right? I'm kinda getting the vibe that the FT is just a special case for the LT where the function can be described over [-inf,+inf].
Also directed at Okay well even if that's true, no need to be disparaging. Let's play nice. What do you study user?
I wish I could answer your question but truth be told I took diff eq first year and haven't looked at FT/LT for a while. I'm hoping to relearn it over the summer so I can start to read up on a modern physics text book my prof recommended and for my signals class next semester. Hopefully the PhDfag can answer you
I haven't studied diffys since high school and I'm no analyst, but it seems that Laplace transforms are much more likely to converge than Fourier transforms because they have a sort of envelope rather than being purely periodic. This comes from using a general complex number in the exponential of the LT rather than a purely imaginary as in FT. I imagine they agree in some special case.
I tend to think of FT in terms of complex representations of groups, and I don't know how or whether LT fit in to this approach.
Definitely true but I feel like that's part of what makes Veeky Forums endearing to me. I will say though that the last two years have been particularly bad on this board in terms of IQ posting, Global Warming shitposting, etc etc.
I spend five days a week being formal about science and putting so much work in, it's nice to have a "water-cooler talk" with a bunch of autists that won't socialize in the lab normally, but will once they're behind a computer. It's a blue-collar discussion board for sure and if you sift through the shitposting, you can find some great threads and talk with smart/experienced people in a casual way with nothing at stake. I tried going to /r/science once from a link in a thread here, and it was grossly rigid and formal since they brandish their qualifications. Science/mathematics are incredibly formal by nature, and it's rare to be able to have an open forum like this one. I take the bad with the good.
I do research at JPL and am a combat vet.
Cool I used JPL ephemerides from the Horizons project for my Astro solar system simulator this year. Decided to program in a 10 solar mass black hole and watched the solar system break.
Are you a god damn liberal arts major? I feel like the breadth of those topics is way too large to be useful.
I'm in 3rd year so these courses are mainly introductions to popular and important subjects.
EM is basically geared towards deriving wave solutions from E and B equations, with some other phenomena added in.
Mathematical methods is a course that aims to cover the core math tools you need for this level of study.
SSE derives the general forms of the four stella structure equations, but doesn;t go into much more depth about density and temperature distributions, and only focuses on main sequence stars.Afterwards, there is a full course on post-MS evolution and stellar end states.
Waves and diffraction is aimed at covering the general mathematics of waves, derives first from the "waves on a string" example, and eventually generalised to 2D "drum" waves and Bessel functions.
HEA is excklusively based on the study of X-ray phenomena and the sources of X-ray emission in the universe. X-ray binary systems are the coolest thing in the course.
Thermal physics covers everything thermal without delving too much into statistical mechanics. That's for next year haha.
Circuits and systems is the study of circuit filters, feedback systems and eventually full frequency domain analysis methods such as root locus and Nyquist analysis.
Quantum is and elementary look at the formulation of the schrodinger equation, and then the application of the SE to various ideal systems to produce predictiond of the bahviour of a general wavefunction in these situations. Shits so cash.
There you go, no liberal arts.
I've also thought about going over to /r but it's just not as fun. Everything is too serious there, Veeky Forums will once in a while have a thread that makes me hang on and believe there is hope