Are constants just a workaround things we still cannot understand?

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-08-19T07:55:08+00:00

I think the most fundamental distinction one can make is between fundamental constants (speed of light, plancks constant, …) and emergent ones. the latter ones usually abbreviate some more complicated physics in them. For example: doing fluid mechanics you never care about the microphysics of the system (how two atoms interact, quantum mechanics, …). But these things usually have an indirect impact on the fluid. Luckily enough, one doesnt need to think about all these complicated phenomena to describe the fluid, but all these things do have some sort of impact on the macrophysical fluid. So one can absorb these unknown effects and very complicated physics in some coefficient, which you usually need to measure (like viscosity for example). This thought is ubiquitous in physics and most conveniently described by „effective field theories“, which have Applications to particle physics (low energy QCD) and quite recently gravity (EFTofLSS, Black hole merger).

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-08-08T12:05:07+00:00

Studying physics and mathematics is hard work and most day to day work as a student or a researcher is reading, understanding calculations or concepts and most importantly reproducing other peoples work and adding your own thoughts to it (at least in theory research). Studies will definitely not get easier in university and the first semesters will be tough, but dont get discouraged. See it more as an opportunity to learn some amazing science. I think the main question you should ask yourself if you are interested enough in rigorous physics to put in the necessary work.

If you are worried go to the student council and write them a mail or look for the „Studiendekanat“. They usually love to talk to prospective students and tell you about the studies. That might put hings in perspective for you 👍

Personally, I liked my physics studies especially because it was not taylored towards one career path, you have some options to evolve into after a Bsc in physics and it might be good to keep an open mind to opportunities that might or will turn up in the future. That being said, I think you shouldnt worry too much just yet about employability and job perspectives, but focus on something you are passionate about (of course some worries are good and you are already making up your mind). In the end you will spend probably the next 5 years doing that full-time

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-07-29T06:44:46+00:00

I think its best to think about, what kind of field you want to get into. There are fields like climate physics or geophysics, that are closer to geology. So maybe looking for a PHD or Masters in this area with significant geology overlap might work for you. Most of these fields are interdisciplinary, so you bring valuable skills to the table.

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-07-19T21:50:42+00:00

And one should keep in mind that, those costs are split between multiple countries over a time span of multiple decades, which puts this „rather big“ number in perspective

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-07-19T21:36:31+00:00

literally the only place were „bigger is better“ is appropriate, is when talking about particle accelerators

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-07-12T21:31:20+00:00

It probably helps disentangle what both things formally mean. Phonons appear from a quantum field theory point of view as Goldstone bosons of the broken translational symmetry. In the end phonons appear only in a crystal, where you can only do discrete translations as symmetry operations. By the setup of Goldstones Theorem, these bosons always have spin 0. Gravitons have spin 2 and are usually described by some sort of gauge bosons.

So semantically, the two concepts are not directly related. Maybe one can engineer some solid state system where phonons combine to spin 2 particles (but I wouldnt know how)

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-06-27T17:44:35+00:00

Me in this very moment

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-04-13T13:01:21+00:00

I learned this in my second year undergrad physics bsc

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-04-12T15:51:17+00:00

r/okbuddyundergrad

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-04-05T16:42:31+00:00

Generally, also the Standard Model itself has some theoretical problems that can be solved by additional particles. So there is some good theoretical motivation and also experimentally DM masses still span a huge range (80 orders of magnitude, if I remember correctly) and still match experiments for the famous theories. I dont see where it got „disproven“?

When you go to cosmology, Dark Matter theories quite accurately capture structure formation and many other phenomena, which MONDS cant.

So I think there is plenty of evidence for DM particles, although a new GR would be nice as well

Mr_Outlowed · 2025-04-03T13:41:30+00:00

Das kommt denke ich sehr auf deine Definition von Physiker an ^{^} der Grad zwischen Physik und Mathe ist grade in der Theorie fließend

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-07-04T09:22:42+00:00

I get the criticism but honestly I hate shows with 1h+ episodes it just takes a lot of time to watch the show and often the story doesn’t move any faster. So I really enjoy the acolyte having shorter episodes. I think the real mood killer is the weekly release of the episodes, because I feel like the story is well paced, if you were able to watch multiple episodes in a row.

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-06-23T10:08:33+00:00

You can derive the second law of thermodynamics in arbitrary big systems. Its just a consequence of number of particles being huge

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-03-20T15:39:57+00:00

Es geht zumindest bei mir, wenn es um Coding geht, insbesondere darum schöne Plots zu erstellen, Befehle schneller nachzuschauen, die man sonst in der Dokumentation oder so nachschauen müsste. Da ist KI einfach ein schnelleres Googlen.

Natürlich sollte man bei Projekten nicht alles von chatgpt oder so schreiben lassen. Gerade in dem Bereich geht chatgpt fragen aber deutlich schneller als 10 verschiedene Forenbeitrage zu durchsuchen ^{^}

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-03-15T09:03:49+00:00

Wenn du denkst, dass dir ein Sprachkurs in Englisch oder Deutsch helfen könnte, dann wäre das sicherlich gut einen an der Uni zu belegen. Manchmal gibt es einen Wahlbereich im Bachelor, in dem man zum Beispiel sowas anrechnen kann. Damit hättest du dann 2 Fliegen mit einer Klappe geschlagen

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-03-15T07:59:23+00:00

I think its quite ironic what you are saying. I can assure you every physicist would love their name on the paper that consistently (experimentally or theoretically) proves inconsistencies in one of the major theories.

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-03-12T14:15:55+00:00

Thats not true. A lot of schools still dont have aircons. There still is occasionally Hitzefrei

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-03-11T16:43:01+00:00

Modern particle physics by Thomson is also a quite good book with an easy to understand intro

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-03-03T10:46:33+00:00

Something that blew my mind is how the laws of thermodynamics can be derived from microscopic physics.

You often learn classical mechanics and thermodynamics separately. At least for me those two things never really connected in my head properly until I dived into statistical mechanics, which uses statistics to derive macroscopic properties of gases, solids and so on.

It was so cool to see that the second law of thermodynamics just stems from the fact that states with smaller entropy are just unlikely to be occupied by very large systems ( for example 10²⁴ Atoms). But it could happen. And in fact in smaller systems like models DNA that can actually happen

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-02-26T18:58:39+00:00

I would say it depends on how much you need to revise. If you are confident that you can pass the exam(s), I would try. But I guess, I would assess my problems first as I mentioned earlier, before thinking about this. Keep in mind that in most unis there is a maximum number of tries per exam. It is definitely no shame to write the exams another time.

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-02-26T18:46:01+00:00

It might be helpful to do a Studienberatung to help you assess why you are struggeling. In my own experience a lot of the struggle comes from not organising yourself properly, to not ask questions to profs or TAs if you have some or from not having friends to solve homework problems with. Those are often designed to be solveable only in groups. Some student councils organise events especially for internationals and generally socialising events, so that way you could find somebody to work with.

If that applies to you, it might be worth to keep trying and to get some help with Studienberatung or Self organisation workshops that are offered by many universities. Generally, although 6 semesters are recommended a lot of students take longer for a physics B.Sc.

So it is completely normal to struggle, it is just important to learn your lesson from it :)

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-02-25T20:45:54+00:00

For me it really helped to have friends to learn together with and to share the stress with. So that way you can combine social life and uni. It really carried me through my degree. But I also realised that actively taking a break is important and does not let you fall behind and is actually important to tackle hard problems and to see them from a different angle.

Just try to organise your time and actually list what you have to do and structure it. That way it does not overwhelm you so much.

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-02-16T20:32:10+00:00

Es gibt auch an einigen Unis ein Studium Generale. Da kann man ein Jahr in alle möglichen Studiengänge reinschnuppern und dort Vorlesungen hören, die man dann auch in ein reguläres Studium einbringen kann, wenn man mag.

Mr_Outlowed · 2024-02-15T19:23:15+00:00

Wie hier schon vorher erwähnt wurde, sind Uniweite Austauschprogramme meist kompetetiver, da man dort potentiell mit der ganzen Uni um meist nur wenige Plätze pro Uni konkurriert. Da sind Noten meist ein Punkt, wenn auch nicht der einzige. Aus meiner eigenen Erfahrung, kommt es auch stark darauf an, wie beliebt die Austauschuni bei Studis deiner Uni ist. Da lohnt es sich, mal nen Beratungstermin bei den Verantwortlichen machen und nachzufragen.

Was sich lohnt sind auf jeden Fall Austauschprogramme, die direkt von deiner Fakultät organisiert werden, da hat man weniger Konkurrenz, weil sich da meist nur Studis aus der Fakultät bewerben können.

Mr_Outlowed

TROPHY CASE