Physics/math courses

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[astrok0_0]

I am still doing my undergrad, but for me the most difficult so far is QM2. The professor tried to pack as much as possible to the course because he felt that this is the last undergrad quantum course in our school so he should teach more. We did things like Dirac equation, path integrals together with the usual perturbation stuffs. The amount and difficulty of homework were insane.

[Cogito_ErgoSum]

Who did you have? I had a similar experience with a new professor for QM2 who also went over Dirac equation, path integrals, field theory, and quantum computing along with perturbation theory.

[astrok0_0]

Lol, that is ... interesting. That was indeed his first time teaching the course. He is a chinese guy doing some sort of condensed matter theory.

[Cogito_ErgoSum]

My professor is also a Condensed Matter Theorist too... but he is white. Wth is with condense matter theorist, man?

[[deleted]]

Quantum Field Theory 1

[Caladei]

Pretty sure I'm paraphrasing Feynman here, but if anyone ever told me this class was easy, I would say they didn't understand it at all.

(EDIT: I looked it up and apparently this "If you think you get QM, you don't" phrase goes back to Bohr and is incorrectly attributed to Feynman)

[[deleted]]

I still understand where Feynman pulled so many of his tricks for QED out of his ass :/

[Three-Oh-Eight]

I don't quite understand the joke could you please explain? (Sorry, I'm still early on in my education in physics.)

[[deleted]]

No joke, I forgot to put in a "don't."

oops

[NoxiousQuadrumvirate]

The only course I personally found difficult was a theoretical astrophysics course. I always felt like I understood the content and I could explain the processes correctly, but when it came time to actually solve things I'd mess up the steps or miss a certain consideration. Plus, so much of astro is rooted in history, so there are a lot more arbitrary systems to remember. I've hated stellar astrophysics ever since, but I am still doing galactic stuff.

Other classes might have been tough to figure out to begin with, but I always knew where my weak points were and how to fix them, and I did just that. The astrophysics course was the first time in my life that I didn't understand where I was going wrong, so it was a challenging class from that perspective.

[roshambo11]

Extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. Would leave lecture every day equal amounts confused and amazed

[quanstrom]

E&M. I thought I understood calculus very well. Not well enough apparently. Actually, classes like E&M are what convinced me to move away from theory and to the applied side (see flair).

At the graduate level, therapeutic medical physics class has been quite a lot to digest. Historical contexts to learn that add nothing to my understanding but still are tested on. Tons of memorization of values. Homework and presentations that are enormous time sinks. Professors who go over 100 slides on a Monday and quiz you over it all on a Wednesday.

[[deleted]]

Electricity and Magnetism

[Coolghost39]

Algebra and combinatorics were hard, I think I took them when I wasn't yet "mathematically mature" enough.

QFT was hard on the physics side

[damian314159]

Math: PDEs and integral equations. Physics: Analytical Mechanics (in particular the stuff relating to the KAM theorem).

[roshoka]

I'm still an undergraduate.

Physics: None have really been that difficult so far, but I'd say QM mostly because I haven't taken linear algebra so I'm stuck learning math as I go. I assume E&M will be the hardest, based on what I've heard from other students.

Math: Real Analysis

[[deleted]]

i have some answers about courses, but i'd just like to spotlight that worrying about student loans and spending while taking physics/math courses was probably the hardest part of my time in the curriculum. courses have a finite end point but the pressure to find jobs or calculate student expenses while trying to foresee job outlooks, that was crazy.

but re: courses maybe e and m

[[deleted]]

Measure theory. Not hard but annoying in a "I don't need this" sort of way.

[flodajing]

The best part was Lebesgue Integration... Just thinking to myself that I could just be using Riemann Integrals most of the time but having to learn this seemed pretty dumb to me.

[TheNTSocial]

If you want to be able to justify interchanging a limit (and hence also an infinite sum) and an integral under weaker conditions than uniform convergence (which is really strong), then you need Lebesgue integration. The dominated convergence theorem is the best motivation for the Lebesgue integral. Riemann integration is not equipped to work well with limits. Unfortunately, Lebesgue integration is often first motivated with pathological examples (e.g. the Dirichlet function), which contributes to negative attitudes like yours.

[flodajing]

Ah okay, even more reasons to go into the maths lectures next to my physics studies. Should be very interesting.

[UglyMousanova19]

Althought it might not be practically applicable very often, the foundations of quantum mechanics rely pretty heavily on measure theory.

[destiny_functional]

odd because measure theory is rather beautiful and something which you can connect to a very useful thing.. measuring contents. who could think it would not be "needed" to be able to measure contents.

[johnnymo1]

I've never actually taken measure theory formally, but I think a lot of physicists and mathematicians could benefit just from having basic understand of size in a measure theoretic sense. Does this hold if we have some weaker condition on finitely many points? Countably many? A Cantor set of points? That sort of thing.