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Dec. 23rd, 2005 01:02 amSo there exists a Princeton essay. I don't know how good it is yet, but hopefully it will get to good soon.
Man, I really should have taken Real Analysis this semester and then take Complex next spring. There's just soooo much math I don't know well enough. For plasma physics, one must absolutely know complex variables well, in addition to tensors. I never understood tensors when we did them for half a week in Physics 50... it's not that difficult to understand some tensors like a pressure tensor or an inertia tensor, but when it comes to contravariant/covariant and transformations that involve tons of pushing subscripts around and the annoying Einstein summation convention of automatically summing over repeated indices... Why oh why didn't I double major in math and physics?
Other thing I don't know anything about: classical perturbation theory. Indeed, I remain totally ignorant of such important topics as a formal theory of Poisson brackets, action-angle variables, and Hamilton-Jacobi theory. Princeton's plasma program requires a course on asymptotic methods that largely focuses on limiting solutions to nasty differential equations, such as the horribly nonlinear ones arising in plasma physics, things like perturbation theory, classical WKB theory, and boundary layer theory. A course on advanced math methods would be so much more useful than computational physics... Perhaps I should sit down this summer and work through Arfken and Weber, as well as Hand and Finch to bring my weak background in classical mechanics up to snuff.
In other news, I found out while walking in Philly Chinatown with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightengalesknd this afternoon that PFD still carries 50 foot Bangor ladders. This makes sense, given the narrow alleys one will find in Philly. I've always wanted to learn how to raise one of those ladders, which requires the use of staypoles. Such ladders, however, are of limited utility in suburbia; we don't carry them (nor, to the best of my knowledge, do the companies we run with), and they don't even teach them in fire school. The Bangor ladders, while cool, are heavy (close to 200 pounds, I think) and are manpower intensive, requiring 5 or 6 people to raise. Yes, when one has the space to park an aerial ladder truck or tower ladder, those are much nicer. But there's something about Bangor ladders that just brings back the days of yore...
Man, I really should have taken Real Analysis this semester and then take Complex next spring. There's just soooo much math I don't know well enough. For plasma physics, one must absolutely know complex variables well, in addition to tensors. I never understood tensors when we did them for half a week in Physics 50... it's not that difficult to understand some tensors like a pressure tensor or an inertia tensor, but when it comes to contravariant/covariant and transformations that involve tons of pushing subscripts around and the annoying Einstein summation convention of automatically summing over repeated indices... Why oh why didn't I double major in math and physics?
Other thing I don't know anything about: classical perturbation theory. Indeed, I remain totally ignorant of such important topics as a formal theory of Poisson brackets, action-angle variables, and Hamilton-Jacobi theory. Princeton's plasma program requires a course on asymptotic methods that largely focuses on limiting solutions to nasty differential equations, such as the horribly nonlinear ones arising in plasma physics, things like perturbation theory, classical WKB theory, and boundary layer theory. A course on advanced math methods would be so much more useful than computational physics... Perhaps I should sit down this summer and work through Arfken and Weber, as well as Hand and Finch to bring my weak background in classical mechanics up to snuff.
In other news, I found out while walking in Philly Chinatown with
nightengalesknd this afternoon that PFD still carries 50 foot Bangor ladders. This makes sense, given the narrow alleys one will find in Philly. I've always wanted to learn how to raise one of those ladders, which requires the use of staypoles. Such ladders, however, are of limited utility in suburbia; we don't carry them (nor, to the best of my knowledge, do the companies we run with), and they don't even teach them in fire school. The Bangor ladders, while cool, are heavy (close to 200 pounds, I think) and are manpower intensive, requiring 5 or 6 people to raise. Yes, when one has the space to park an aerial ladder truck or tower ladder, those are much nicer. But there's something about Bangor ladders that just brings back the days of yore...
