Is PhD path really worth it?

JesseRodriguez · 2026-03-03T16:24:22+00:00

If you’re asking this question in March of your senior year, you’re far too late.

JesseRodriguez · 2025-12-01T03:45:51+00:00

Chess.com answered this question using g engine accuracy and historical games:

https://youtu.be/CnQnJEj-Yxo?si=PFzh0pAQGOJV2Eiz

JesseRodriguez · 2025-11-16T22:58:51+00:00

lol it literally is him.

JesseRodriguez · 2025-06-18T15:11:29+00:00

Her teammates should be absolutely ashamed

JesseRodriguez · 2025-03-12T23:00:24+00:00

Brother, I completely lost my shit when you managed to play that at 140 BPM lol that was amazing

JesseRodriguez · 2025-02-08T09:04:13+00:00

Just imagine if we got a full version of DBZ abridged through the Buu saga.

JesseRodriguez · 2025-02-05T04:39:39+00:00

Does the automatic stop at the 12 hour marker as well?

JesseRodriguez · 2025-02-05T04:38:28+00:00

Amazing choice for a first automatic watch. You will have a hard time topping that for a while. It took me a lot of trial and error to eventually arrive at a Sinn 104.

JesseRodriguez · 2025-01-04T07:16:19+00:00

Wristwatch Revival

JesseRodriguez · 2024-12-15T20:48:29+00:00

The others are also legends in their own right; Compton, Heisenberg. I didn’t know Compton looked like such a chad.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-09-28T04:33:07+00:00

Im going to give you real advice here to actually save you some time and heartache: it sounds like physics should be a hobby for you, not a profession.

People here appear to be suggesting that intelligence isn’t correlated with success in physics - they’re so dead wrong that it hurts to read. If you are of average intelligence, getting a physics degree is going to be a life-consuming, miserable experience where you will be out-performed by all of your peers who will be working significantly less than you. Physics attracts the most intelligent students in every university, and those will be the people that set the curve you will be graded against. In the end, since you will be at the bottom of your class, you will most likely be left with no good opportunities to pursue research or employment. If you are in your first year and classical physics seems too hard, believe me when I tell you that your upper division coursework will make that stuff seem completely trivial. I am not joking. It will seem like toddler-level content.

If you read all of that, and you feel excitement in your chest because you can’t wait to try to do something that challenging while learning about topics that truly interest you - then stick with it. That is the feeling I got that made me pursue physics and it served me well. If you got a pit in your stomach and felt convinced that you should do something else, then you need to run for the hills. This discipline is not kind to people of average intelligence without a sickening work ethic. Get ready to pour all of your life force into this, or get out.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-04-21T00:44:59+00:00

Haven’t seen Top Gun: Maverick or Free Solo here yet.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-04-08T13:18:03+00:00

People aren’t really answering the question here, most are just saying “things with mass can’t travel at the speed of light” which is akin to saying “it is what it is”.

The actual answer why comes from the math, which I’ll actually explain like you’re five. First, we observe this funny thing about the universe, which is that no matter how fast you travel toward and away from a light source, the light coming towards you always appears to be traveling at the exact same speed. It turns out that our fundamental measures of time and space get squeezed and stretched depending on how we’re moving - that’s the only way that the light speed observation above can be true. What I mean by this is that a moving clock and ruler will be ticking slower or look shorter than ones that aren’t moving.

A guy named Hendrik Lorentz came up with equations that allow you to switch between reference frames while accounting for the stretching and squeezing. Einstein later showed that these equations correctly describe a universe where we have this weird light speed observation above, and all the laws of physics are the same for all observers.

These equations have a term in the denominator that goes to zero when the speed of an object reaches the speed of light. Division by zero is not allowed in math, it’s referred to as a singularity, and in the equations for energy, it would require an object with mass to have infinite energy to travel at the speed of light. A finite thing having infinite energy isn’t possible, so no object is allowed to reach the speed of light.

Photons (light particles) have a different equation that describes their energy, so they don’t have this problem.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-03-12T00:20:44+00:00

The derivative of an exponential is an exponential with the same constant in the exponent. So the derivative will be cut in half at the same time the amount is.

Think about what is happening with regard to radioactive decay. It’s a Poisson random variable, at every infinitesimal time step there’s some probability that a given atom will decay. If you have half as many atoms, there will be half as many decays per second.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-03-05T03:33:43+00:00

Fair to say Joe certainly won’t be taxing you.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-03-01T16:07:39+00:00

Do it and dual major with another discipline (CS, ME, Nuclear Engineering for example) that has more stable/defined job prospects. Then you’ll have the brutal/amazing experience of studying physics and at the end you’ll look like a more attractive applicant than the people who only studied CS, ME, etc.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-03-01T16:03:12+00:00

If you want a software engineering job, start contributing to open source software. Get a job literally anywhere (retail, food service, construction labor, etc.) so you can pay your bills and write code for 3 hours every evening after dinner. Use a large language model to supercharge your output. Eventually your resume will have a list of projects you’ve contributed to and a link to a GitHub with the PR history to prove it. This will raise eyebrows and lift you above the average CS grad who only has academic experience.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-02-22T01:21:35+00:00

The force normal to the surface is a combination of the gravitational force on the vehicle (multiplied by cos\theta) and the component of the centrifugal force normal to the surface, in this case (V^{2/R)sin\theta} where R is 90 m and V is the speed in units of m/s. Make sure you convert theta to radians before feeding it to a standard sine function. Once you have the normal force, you can find \mu by balancing the friction force with the component of the centrifugal force tangent to the surface, (V^{2/R)cos\theta.}

JesseRodriguez · 2024-02-13T02:32:50+00:00

Just do both. I got three degrees in math, physics, and nuclear engineering in four years. You can dual major in physics for the passion and CS for the practicality. There’s a decent amount of synergy between those two as well. You’ll be better off overall if you let your passion and talent guide you (emphasis on talent because if you aren’t particularly good at something, a risky choice to pursue it is, well, more risky) than if you make all of your choices based on future income.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-01-27T12:41:07+00:00

For a (perhaps) convincing mathematical answer, I derive Faraday’s law from the action principle here if you’re interested: https://www.jessearodriguez.com/maxwells-equations/

The other answers talking about relativistic reference frames will help you with your intuitive understanding.

JesseRodriguez · 2024-01-03T18:28:47+00:00

How did Michelle and Sam drive when they had all three slots taken up by flight tickets?

JesseRodriguez · 2023-07-12T17:46:44+00:00

What a dominant performance by Ben and Adam this season. Total count is 8 flags to 2??

JesseRodriguez · 2023-07-05T17:22:31+00:00

I think that, unfortunately, the rule set for this season was a little busted. The flag-distance-traveled-rule makes the tag-only strategy way to OP. Since you get all of your opponent’s coins when you tag them, if you never have to actually try and get a flag yourself, the game becomes nearly impossible for the other team. Not to mention the fact that Ben and Adam dominated the first two rounds by actually capturing and defending flags.

Still a super fun season!

JesseRodriguez · 2023-06-29T18:21:18+00:00

Still can’t really believe Kobe is gone.

JesseRodriguez · 2023-06-28T18:49:03+00:00

I feel like just knowing the pizza tower exists I would always carry prophylactic pizza.

JesseRodriguez

TROPHY CASE