My undergrad quantum mechanics class had 12 people. My professor described the first mid term with my favorite quote tothis day. "If it's solvable it's trivial".
Me: *Physics student taking Differential Equations class* Professor: “Now there is a whole chapter here on solving differential equations by variation of boundaries, but the only people who EVER use this are physicists, so we’re skipping the whole chapter.” Me: ................................ great. 😩
For me it was Modern physics just because our professor was from Harvard and he had the highest expectation. we started with 20 students and by finals, there were only 5 students left and only 3 passed.
No offense but your professor sucks. He's a professor so he should've atleast tried to help everyone. What's the point of being a professor if you can't even teach the majority of your students.
I also found statistical mechanics and thermodynamics challenging, but only for the first time when I learned it (Level 3XXX). It became easier when I learned it at the second time (Level 4XXX). There is actually a famous quotation by Arnold Sommerfeld mentioned by my professor at Level 3XXX:"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, so it doesn't bother you any more." And that's true, at least for the first and second times.
Yeah, It's weird to go into a class where the expectation is that you'll get practice solving some problems, but you won't really understand what you are doing by the end of the semester. I took several classes like that, and it drove me nuts desperately trying to understand the material. For thermodyamics, the textbook and instructor weren't much help either.
Yeah, in one of my first few classes of thermo and stat mech, my professors was giving background on founders, and was like, "yeah...you'll find that they all seem to kill themselves...*awkward laugh* but I wouldn't worry too much about it". I should've. Stat mech definitely killed me. One of the hardest classes.
@@abhabh6896 It is, but it kinda makes history completely unamusing. Just the other day my friend texted me something like "Dude! Did you know that medieval french court tried and executed a pig for murder? That's crazy!". To which I could only reply "Yeah, what about it? I've seen this court record in full, it makes total sense, if you think about the concept of justice at the time".
@@miobiuscrimson2828 There will always be something you do not know about and well you always have the future to be amused by and the present aswell. I for one find medieval history really interesting but you always have my field , the dark abyss of theoretical physics.
One of the hardest class I had was Advanced Quantum Mechanics. The contents of the class was very interesting and I managed to understand the math and concepts behind it. What made it hard was that the tests and exam covered things completely different from what was discussed in class and assignments.
Intro to astrophysics was a crazy hard class. There was no lecture and the exercises went through so many topics (celestial mechanics, schwarzschild spacetime, quantum ideal gases, nuclear fusion, expansion of the universe, CMB) at record speed. I'm not a physics student, and I also didn't take nearly enough math classes for this.
I remember back in the good ol’ days... our Q.M. Class took 4 hours a night for homework. It started out with about 45 students and ended with the four of us. (Someone asked if my first edition Shankar was my Bible since I was always carrying it and studying from it.) My E&M class wasn’t “easy”, but the material really “clicked” for me (Reitz, Christie & Milford-did anyone else notice how many problems were converted from Gaussian units?) Yndrian’s “Quantum Chromodynamics had just been published and the prof’s didn’t understand the Standard Model any better than we did. The former QM prof had finally developed some respect for us “fantastic four”. Sadly one lady had to leave school because of visa problems. The highlight of the year was a symposium road trip where we met Dr. Carl Sagan. Thanks for your video and the revival of memories of the good ol’ days.
I love your videos. I'm graduating with a physics BS this semester too. Best feeling is when you don't really know what you're doing in a 4000 level course but by now you've got that sweet sweet skill to guess a method to solve any problem.
Honestly, I found university physics far more difficult than anything that followed (except maybe advanced E&M - we used Jackson for half the course but that was more than enough to break my spirit). I had a very bad habit of trying to really understand the material and re-deriving everything on my own - unfortunately, this was a very time-consuming process and it often was not what I was tested on. Though I must admit, that mentality served me well when I moved into upper-division courses.
I have the same habit....Like I was reading a book about economic and I stop reading (for now) when the book talk about game theory because I dot nothing about game theory.....the same with classic mechanic, I stop studying to learn variational calculus
I’m majoring and physics as well and this is my first year of undergrad and I’m having a hard time with classical mechanics as well and damn I love you for making me feel like everyone else struggles with it too 😭🤝
I really think that thermo/stat mech is something that you have to see multiple times to be able to appreciate. I’ve probably covered thermo in depth in 4-5 courses in my undergrad and stat mech in 2 classes (one more in grad school yay!)
I really identified with your experience when you said you wished you’d developed your mathematical rigor beforehand. I came into university as a physics major but switched over to majoring in pure math and minoring in physics. Upon taking upper level and more rigorous math courses, I realized that a lot of what I struggled with early on, could be attributed to not knowing the math yet.
Quantum mechanics in my undergrad literally felt as hard as a major life tragedy. I tried hard to gain a deep intuition of QM the entire semester and it still feels blotchy.
Geometry of general relitivity was pretty tough. (Though it was taught as a mathematics course) The prerequisite courses are differential geometry, algebra & differential equations. Recomended to be taken with differentiable manifolds.
Sounds more like a first year graduate level class to me. It's pretty rare to find a mathematical treatment of general relativity in undergraduate physics programs. Then again, you said it was a mathematics course, so I can definitely see it.
my current top 3 are: 1. plasma physics (deriving all the wavefunctions for differect scenarios, and using the momentum, continuity and heat equation. And on top of that; Landau damping) 2. Classical mechanics (should imo be taken later on after the fundamental maths courses) 3. Quantum mechanics (many new concepts, didnt have proper training in differential equations beforehand and SPIN :-P )
Classical Mechanics *is* a fundamental maths course! Well, that’s part-joke: calculus and differential equations are of great help in dealing with it. But (the way the taught me) a whole bunch of maths was derived at the course itself, because it is not generally taught in maths courses.
Jilal Jahangir it’s a great book to have near as a quick reference, but not a good book to learn from whatsoever. It skips many steps in derivations (most of which are completely non trivial), and usually does not explain why the author is doing things the way he’s doing it. But unfortunately it’s still the most complete book out there. Zangwill comes close (and even has some topics Jackson doesn’t cover at all), but it’s not there yet (maybe next edition?).
I agree. Thermal/Stat-Mech was really demanding. I took it from Dan Schroeder (the guy who wrote the book), it was super interesting and deep but REALLY hard to wrap your head around at times.
Statistical Mechanics was definitely one of the hardest. I also took Atomic Physics, as an elective, and yeah it was hard. Mad props to you for taking it at the same time you took QM, that's some serious flexing right there. I was doubling in Physics and Chemistry, so I got to take 2 semesters of PChem, which is a lot like Statisical Physics (but with labs).
Lol, procrastinating on my atomic physics take home final by watching video about why atomic physics is hard. Sigh... Excuse me while I go calculate some rubidium. So much goddamn rubidium.
Mine was without a doubt Solid State Physics. My Analytical mechanics seemed hard at first but then just became a chore once I got the hang of it..but SSP was a class that I thought I would really like, but I never had it click in my head. Also we had 7 people at the start of the semester, and 4 people at the final.
I detested Solid State. My university made us take it in some form every year pretty much. Some of the early toy model stuff was fun such as finding speed of sound in a solid. Then came lattice structures and Brillouin zones and Miller indices. Horrid.
Let me first preface this with the following: I got my BS in physics in 2005, so it’s been a long time since my undergrad years. Watching this video had me nodding in agreement, and laughing out loud. There was no TH-cam at the time I was studying physics. I always felt like I was hitting my intellectual limit, if you will, EVERYDAY. There was never a day that went by where I didn’t feel feel inadequate as I was trying navigate through the 30 page solutions for my problem set of six questions 🤦🏻♀️ Needless to say, my best class was actually classical mechanics 😂 My worst? Electricity and Magnetism 😵💫 The one I was not prepared for was my nuclear and particle physics class…and quantum mechanics…both flew over my head, if im going to be honest. I can do the math, but I had no clue what it actually represented. I started getting back into physics recently after the concept of consciousness starting piquing my interesting…which then led to quantum physics…then quantum field theory…and now I had to review everything 🤦🏻♀️ It woke the sleeping giant in me and now I just need to see it through. I appreciate your videos because they’ve given some great tips on good reference books and textbooks to get to help with my sudden resurgence into physics again. Thank you! 😆
I'm currently undergraduate student in third semester and the courses I hated the most until now were experimental physics: classical mechanics, electrodynamics and optics. It's mostly because in the lecture you only get told some special cases and the formulas you are supposed to use in these cases but don't learn why the things are how they are. It's always like: "It's like that, deal with it!" The worst of theses was optics because there were just too many different conventions used for everything. A really annoying example would be Bragg-scattering which sometimes used half the scattering-angle for the Bragg-angle, sometimes the scattering-angle was just the Bragg-angle and once it was pi plus the scattering-angle, and everytime it was totally unclear which convention was used. The exercises were so arbitrary that the only real way to get good marks was knowing the results beforehand and then reverse-engineer what you need to do. Still I was made to think that as an experimental phycisist you need to know the answer before you tackle the problem and then try to make sense of it, which is just not really my beer.
For me it was Computer Organization. Basically how the hardware organizes data flow. Even tho im studying cs I find physics extremely interesting although I don’t want to study it myself. Subscribed.
I definitely struggled with QM II in which we covered chapter 5 to the end of Griffith's. The homeworks were super challenging and so were the exams. I also struggeld with EM while it seems a lot of people didn't. Classical mechanics tends to be a very difficult class even for people who started off as physics majors since it's the first "real" physics class that you take.
Correct on classical. That was one of the hardest classes I ever took, everyone thought it was hard, even people good at it. That was literally the moment I saw how smart physicist professors could be. My professor didn't use any notes at all and could answer absolutely any question at all in the book without thinking, or cracking the book. In some of the classes, he would just ask us what we wanted to know. It literally made you(your convention :)) feel stupid. But looking back It wasn't really hard because a lot of things you could visualize, whereas other classes took a lot more effort to visualize problems. However, the main thing I learned was the amount of rigor needed to do other classes.
Taking classical mechanics right now and I could not agree with your description more. I thought I was so good at classical physics because I knew all the equations and when to use them. Once I got to this class I realized you actually need to derive what you're doing and if you mess up in one place everything beyond it is wrong. Just going to have to forget everything I know and start from the ground up🤷🏼♂️
The math is a bug problem for me, especially when the profs are so up and down. I had my worst prof on advanced calc but my best one in complex variables for example. The only one left is PDEs for me now so I'm hoping I can do better in the physics side. I have thermal and quantum next year plus class mech 2 and statistical as a choice in the final year. I also have electricity and magnetism. Here's hoping I can get into the groove of things as things are so fast paced in my university, you can't catch a breath. I also might have research next fall as well since I couldn't find it in the summer. Wish me luck
Stellar Astronomy, Quantum, and Cosmology. I haven't taken Thermo/Stat Mec yet but I've had to study special topics of both in 3 of my astronomy classes so, hopefully I'll have an upper hand. We'll see...
One thing that you talked about that I couldn’t agree more with is the lack of mathematical knowledge. Nothing frustrates me more than a physics course where I am introduced to a math concept that I have never used and expected to pick up on it immediately. Sure, I can memorize solutions but it feels so dirty to use something I don’t have a clue about. I’m trying to plan my math courses in a way that will hopefully prepare me for upcoming physics courses.
Classical mechanics 1&2 were my favorite classes in undergrad. I loved learning the math and principles behind complex problems I could see in the real world. Hardest was taking thermo and solid state at the same time
Started as a biology major too and currently having classical mechanics. I really, really love this course (I didn’t fully understand the calculus of variations part but still). I think a good teacher is mandatory in that kind of course (without a good teacher I can defo tell it would’ve been a nightmare). Here in Quebec, we do physics 1 and 2 as well as cal 1 and 2 in college before we even go to university (we start uni with classical), and physics 2 was my worst class. I have ptsd from it to the point that I’m extremely scared about electromagnetism next semester.
I guess, thinking about it, my three were all third year: Atomic and solid state physics, astrophysics, and optical physics. I found them particularly challenging because neither my study methods nor mathematics hadn't developed well enough (also missed half a sem due to unfortunate circumstances). I wrote out a 3 page latex doc trying to understand first order perturbation for atomic physics. Took it to my lecturer, and he said, "yeah, all you need is this last bit."
Thermodynamics was challenging, but mainly because we had a massive programming project worth a third of the final grade, and I was just learning basic programming in another class. Having the flu a week before the final didn't help either.
Honestly, Solid State Physics killed me. Though, that semester, I got the flu twice, and missed 4 of the 16 weeks, so that whole semester was terrible. I agree that Classical Mechanics was hard. It's like, everything you did before was just a nice sample, then you dug deep into the core of what you were approximating. It's like when you have to take Assembler programming in a Computer Science degree. You thought you knew what was going on, and you thought you knew how to code, but then realized that someone did all the heavy lifting for you.
1. Atomic & Nuclear (actually failed). I suggest learning about the calculus of variations. I swear I'm not normally one to blame a teacher, but in this class we probably went a solid month of just chatting aimlessly before receiving a syllabus. We never even reached the point of discussing any physics on the topic, it was mostly chemistry and pretending that we knew how to calculate shannon entropy. 2. Quantum, passed but my teacher literally didn't teach. He'd end lectures after 20 minutes and just hang out. I liked that it was algebraic. Prof. pretty much only talked about arguably trivial integrals in class though. Offered rather little info on probability theory or anything like that. 3. Statistical. This was honestly the hardest course. I don't think I even had calc 2 when I took it. It was sooooooo brutal. You'll want to know a bit about multivariable calculus before jumping into this. Easiest? Any independent study. As long as you can keep your professor entertained, with relevant info, you're pretty much guaranteed an A.
For my undergrad experience, it was Electromagnetics, Quantum Mechanics, and Mathematical Physics (Math Phys was a 500 level graduate course concerned with real-world applications and solutions of Physics concepts, such as coordinate transformations, Fourier series, Legendre and Bessel functions, quantum mechanics, etc, and also using numerical methods and computers to solve problems that could not be analytically solved.)
I took Classical Mechanics straight out of Uni. Physics II, and hadn’t had differential equations yet. The professor was hilariously vague and unhelpful, but it made the homework assignments genuinely rewarding to complete (when we actually managed to complete them). Its made Engineering Dynamics a cakewalk though!
1) EM, but mostly because we were only taught vector calculus during the first lecture, and then we were expected to just run with it. I failed that class, but got an A in it next year. 2) Thermodynamics, for the exact reasons you put. 3) Solid-State Theory, which was mostly about superconductivity. I really struggled with this. Especially since you never end up with an expression like Ohm's law, i.e., an expression for conductivity.
Calculation wise, Classical Mechanic 2, Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics 2 were brutal but as for difficult concepts to even wrap your head around, Non-Locality was a custerfuck. The words "behaviour space" and "cshs inequalities" still give me goosebumps.
Well, I'm currently in my second semester of physics (first year) and I'm sadly struggling with linear algebra. I'm fine with the physics courses, but it is with the mathematics courses that the professors take way too much time proving all the theorems (with no apparent relation at all to any physics field)
Linear algebra can get super abstract. But honestly, if you can really internalize things like what exactly the relationship between eigenvalues and eigenvectors are, what the significance of a 0 determinant is, completeness, and different vector spaces, you'll get a lot more out of your first course in quantum mechanics. It gives you the tools to look at the schrodinger equation as an eigenvalue problem instead of a second order partial differential equation. Linear algebra is such a powerful tool once you get used to it.
When you get to odes and then pdes. You can skip entire lectures because all they do is talk about applications or theorems or even proofs. Then tests and assignments are so easy and straight forward lol
0:48 I really wonder how a biologist's brain work? How can a people memorize that much thing? I find even highschool biology hell. I start to study a year early, because if I don't I know that I'm going to fall behind. I only study 2 page a day! And it take almost a hour!
Its funny, I am a chemistry major and I decided to take Thermo+StatMechs in the same semester as my QM+Statmechs pchem course. I should note that I took pchem thermo in my previous semester. The differences are....incredible. At least where I was taught, half of our course was stat mechs for physics and my pchem class had I kid you not, one or two lectures near the very end. Needlessly to say, I was more prepared for my pchem class than the rest of my peers. The differences in thermo were pretty interesting too. We used cyclic rule alot in pchem as well as the interchange rule. We also did alot of assumptions which we could't really do in physics. While I did have an advantage in the physics course (I was one of the lucky ones who got a B in the class), it was not overwhelming.
Classical Mechanics was the hardest lol You had to learn how to think in physics! Love your vids! I’m an EE major with Photonics Area Pathway and hope to go into a Physics PHD!
I know that feeling. Looking at a problem not knowing what it really us but getting done and right anyway. Its a hint of being a master feels like. I had this happen to me econometrics, and international economics
The biggest issue with a lot of the units I struggled with was that we didn't have just a classical mechanics unit, or just a quantum mechanics unit. Instead they were mixed with other, equally difficult topics, so when it came exam time you needed to be on top of your game for multiple different fields for a single unit. A couple examples of these units are Physics 2A, which was Quantum mechanics (covered the stuff you'd expect, solving and normalising wave functions of single particle systems in various different potentials) and EM waves (EM was went up to pretty complicated electrodynamics, didn't just stick with electro and magnetostatics). Another really tough one for me was called Physics 2B which had solid state physics, special relativity and intro to general relativity and classical mechanics all in the one unit. Each topic on it's own was not too bad, but having to know all of them really well for the exam was tough. The hardest unit I did though was simply called modern optics. I did this in my first semester second year, and it was the first time the unit was running. After the semester was over the university changed it to an honours level unit without changing almost any of the content. For reference, there were 16 people that enrolled in the unit, by the time the exam rolled around, only 8 people showed up, and of that only 3 of us passed. It covered everything from diffraction and interference to holography, non-linear optics and advanced imaging theory (Nano- and Bio-Photonics). On top of all of this we also had to do 6 labs, and write reports for each of them (compared to the usual 3-4 in other units) and do a 3,000 word review paper on a modern optics technique, including at least 20 citations from peer reviewed papers. It was brutal. I scraped through that with a 55% from memory.
I liked classical mechanics it is really simple. It is the thinnest volume in theoretical physics(Landau and Lifshitz). There are only 3 systems of equations that allow you to solve anything. The difference is that sometimes some systems might not be useful and that is why you need to know all three. Otherwise any of them is equally good. 1) Lagrange equations. You need to know Lagrange function for the system(which is usually just a difference between kinetic and potential energies). Written equations are equivalent to Newton's laws. If something is conserved then you can use so called integrals of motion which simplifies differential equations to algebraic. Generalized momenta, coordinates and energy helps with math. 2) Hamiltonian equations. Same as the previous one, but used when you are interested in momentum instead of velocity(for example all photons have the same speed, but the momenta are different). Has simpler math. 3) Jacobian equations.
I had the same experience with classical thermodynamics vs Stat.Mech, only slightly more so and for slightly different reasons. I barely struggled through classical thermo, but once we got into partition functions and canonical ensembles everything clicked for me and thermodynamics became very easy. I took a high level course in Fluid Mech, and that got pretty gnarly. I never took the lab courses because I'm a theoretical physicist (and actually now I'm a mathematical biologist, moving in the opposite direction to you), but I heard some horror stories from my classmates. GR and String theory were surprisingly easy, but I had the advantage of having taken the math in advance.
Astrophysics 2 (cosmology) was the hardest undergrad class I had. I got a B in that class. Subatomic physics is a runner-up, the math was pretty challenging for the level I was at.
1. Graduate Mathematical Physics (Riemmanian geometry, group theory, topology) 2. Quantum Mechanics 2 (Quantum 1 was a walk in the park compare to the second half) 3. General Relativity (I was super into GR but had major senioritis so this class was super hard but only cause I didn’t put the effort in lol)
I actually liked thermodynamics, it was my favorite. The statistical mechanics portion was then attributed when I took biophysics and basically combined both and applied them to biological macromolecules
I also took a course on series (summation on different series, power series, fourier series, fourier and laplace transform). Really useful on certain physics problems we face on applied physics.
I got an A in Electric Circuits 2 because most of the problems were about modelling mechanical systems into a form of transient RLC circuits in s domain and then solved using Laplace transform. I was good at using Laplace transform then. But I was actually weak at electricity concepts. And I could pass Automatic Control courses, thanks to Laplace transform. :)
You know, I'm not even a physics student (Going to go into business) and I'm here watching you talk about things I'll never study. I just like how you make the videos.
I'm not sure how its taught at other schools, but chemical engineering thermodynamics is exactly like he described in this video, and is taken after pchem. They are really different.
I find it interesting that you have Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics on your list. At the university I attended in Denmark, the exam for the physics majors with the highest failure rate was actually thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
Andrew Dotson well Andrew i am a Biology major and we are taking some courses in mechanics the module is called "mechanics of a point " (if i explained it right because in Algeria we study only in French)
As Abdelmoula said, why don't you do some lower division mechanics problems. Then, to make the videos more interesting, you could describe the difference of those problems in lower division classes, vs. the big boy classes ("lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism," your words in a comment to me a couple weeks ago)
Jerry Smitherson Okay so have me solve an easier problem, then show how you could write it in a more sophisticated way so that the transition to “big boy” mechanics is smoother ?
Statistical Mechanics was hard. Our professor was able to get to quantum statistical mechanics. The problem was that I didn't take the thermo class, so I didn't understand the system. Partition functions were fun thought. I am a math and physics major. If you don't mind me asking, what math courses did you take?
Hi, I took the traditional calc 1 - multivariable/ vector calc. I also took a course in linear algebra, differential equations, real analysis, and partial differential equations.
Andrew Dotson Did you take both semesters of real analysis? Since you took at least the first section in real analysis. I took quantum mechanics too, one thing that I didn't understand was Hilbert space. But just recently I was about to figure out why they use it. One of the main problems in QM going from finite to infinite, because sumations don't always converge. In real analysis, you find out that the reals are complete, i. e. Every Cauchy sequence converges, while the set of complex numbers are not. Notice that Hilbert space is a subspace of complex space. Also, Hilbert space is complete. I just thought it was cool.
Yeah the whole thing that makes hilbert spaces useful in QM is that the functions that live inside it are square integrable, which makes it possible to normalize them. What's really cool is when you learn how to "mix" hilbert spaces with a tensor product, and then use the completeness of the basis vectors to create a new, almost hybrid, eigenstate. And no, I didn't take the second semester of Real Analysis. I plan on taking it at some point, though.
I've just started this year and I kinda expected this list ahaha The first impact was tough indeed but at the same time, let me say your videos make me want to keep going and try- so thanks! Also, ps: your hair is the best
Stat Mech was the most challenging physics course. CM, EM weren't too bad. QM was a lot of work but not too difficult. SS was very challenging, but passed all my courses with very good grades. After completing the physics major, I went on to engineering school, more practical and not as difficult to succeed in school and find a job.
Give a caveman a book and he'll be warm for an hour. Teach him how to read it, and he will never understand thermodynamics
you mean teach him how to read it but he gets frustrated when he doesn't understand shit and burns it anyway
Aleksy Limb lol
Oh common... It's not that bad :D
LOL!
Nicely played Tieman. Nicely played.
I finally understood High School Chemistry after a year of QM.
😭
high school chmistry teacher be like "task failed successfully"
@@michaelcho6484 Chemistry is really boring
Lol fr
@@of8155
Sounds like your just in the wrong place.
My undergrad quantum mechanics class had 12 people. My professor described the first mid term with my favorite quote tothis day. "If it's solvable it's trivial".
I'm going to remember that one. It's pure gold.
I study in Paris and all chemistry and physics students are forced to take that class and about 20 to 30% pass, it was a freaking bloodbath.
Maybe he means solving analytically? Equations that can only be solved numerically are not trivial for sure.
such hubris. I guess it is trivial once it is solved tho
That sounds like a idea from Surely you’re joking mr Feynman!
Me: *Physics student taking Differential Equations class*
Professor: “Now there is a whole chapter here on solving differential equations by variation of boundaries, but the only people who EVER use this are physicists, so we’re skipping the whole chapter.”
Me: ................................ great. 😩
i am so glad my diffeq prof actually appreciates the applications in physics and takes the time to explain it.
oh that hurts
lol so true. I just decided we are supposed to do the rest of the chapters outside of class.
No physics majors ever actually went to Diff EQ lectures so the math department never liked us
As an engineer who just got an A- in diff eq, I fear what could have happened
For me it was Modern physics just because our professor was from Harvard and he had the highest expectation. we started with 20 students and by finals, there were only 5 students left and only 3 passed.
That's hilarious
Sounds like he is a bad teacher
seems like a shitty professor
omg lol
No offense but your professor sucks. He's a professor so he should've atleast tried to help everyone. What's the point of being a professor if you can't even teach the majority of your students.
Science.....
If it moves.....it's Biology
If it smells....it's Chemistry
If it doesn't work....it's Physics
If it's dirty, environmental science
If it didn't work chemistry would have always remained a mystery.
If its everything.....its physics
I also found statistical mechanics and thermodynamics challenging, but only for the first time when I learned it (Level 3XXX). It became easier when I learned it at the second time (Level 4XXX). There is actually a famous quotation by Arnold Sommerfeld mentioned by my professor at Level 3XXX:"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, so it doesn't bother you any more." And that's true, at least for the first and second times.
Yeah, It's weird to go into a class where the expectation is that you'll get practice solving some problems, but you won't really understand what you are doing by the end of the semester. I took several classes like that, and it drove me nuts desperately trying to understand the material. For thermodyamics, the textbook and instructor weren't much help either.
5:45 "I had no idea what I was doing but I knew how to do it" big mood
HONESTLY!
4:12 "One of the founders, Boltzman, spent his whole life studying statistical mechanics and thermodynamics - and then he killed himself..."
Yeah, in one of my first few classes of thermo and stat mech, my professors was giving background on founders, and was like, "yeah...you'll find that they all seem to kill themselves...*awkward laugh* but I wouldn't worry too much about it". I should've. Stat mech definitely killed me. One of the hardest classes.
Then his student spent HIS life studying statistical mechanics and killed himself
Now it's our turn studying statistical mechanics.
@Peter Jordanson Ludwig Boltzmann. Stefan and Boltzmann were different people
Thermodynamics was hard. I couldn't take the heat. Ba-doom-ching!
Shut up
Would have been more funny for a heat transfer class
Well, some year 10 students are learning thermodynamics in graduate level.
Yeah, I know what you mean... the more I study General Relativity, the tensor I get! Ba-doom-Ching!
No. I am a Physics professor and the hardest classes are typically as follows: E&M, Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics in that order.
Andrew: My experiences may not correspond with yours.
Me, a medieval history major: Oh, okay, no big deal.
lmaoooo
That seems interesting
@@abhabh6896 It is, but it kinda makes history completely unamusing. Just the other day my friend texted me something like "Dude! Did you know that medieval french court tried and executed a pig for murder? That's crazy!". To which I could only reply "Yeah, what about it? I've seen this court record in full, it makes total sense, if you think about the concept of justice at the time".
@@miobiuscrimson2828 There will always be something you do not know about and well you always have the future to be amused by and the present aswell. I for one find medieval history really interesting but you always have my field , the dark abyss of theoretical physics.
One of the hardest class I had was Advanced Quantum Mechanics. The contents of the class was very interesting and I managed to understand the math and concepts behind it. What made it hard was that the tests and exam covered things completely different from what was discussed in class and assignments.
And here I am complaining about binomial expansion.
Praise \[T]/ ...why
Lmaoooo
To add to your existential crisis most of the students here in India learn Binomial Theorem in their 9th year.
@@mannyheffley9551 Yeah! We learned Combinations and permutations, Binomial expansions and Group theory in grade 9 and 10.
@@mannyheffley9551 In fucking Brazil too. It is common lol
Intro to astrophysics was a crazy hard class. There was no lecture and the exercises went through so many topics (celestial mechanics, schwarzschild spacetime, quantum ideal gases, nuclear fusion, expansion of the universe, CMB) at record speed.
I'm not a physics student, and I also didn't take nearly enough math classes for this.
agreed, as an astro student it is painful to study astrophysics
No lecture? Strange. Guess I got lucky. My astro professor researched galaxy formation and won teaching awards
@@Astro2024 There are almost no resources to practice the material, hence it makes it even harder
I remember back in the good ol’ days... our Q.M. Class took 4 hours a night for homework. It started out with about 45 students and ended with the four of us. (Someone asked if my first edition Shankar was my Bible since I was always carrying it and studying from it.) My E&M class wasn’t “easy”, but the material really “clicked” for me (Reitz, Christie & Milford-did anyone else notice how many problems were converted from Gaussian units?) Yndrian’s “Quantum Chromodynamics had just been published and the prof’s didn’t understand the Standard Model any better than we did. The former QM prof had finally developed some respect for us “fantastic four”. Sadly one lady had to leave school because of visa problems. The highlight of the year was a symposium road trip where we met Dr. Carl Sagan. Thanks for your video and the revival of memories of the good ol’ days.
I love your videos. I'm graduating with a physics BS this semester too. Best feeling is when you don't really know what you're doing in a 4000 level course but by now you've got that sweet sweet skill to guess a method to solve any problem.
Honestly, I found university physics far more difficult than anything that followed (except maybe advanced E&M - we used Jackson for half the course but that was more than enough to break my spirit). I had a very bad habit of trying to really understand the material and re-deriving everything on my own - unfortunately, this was a very time-consuming process and it often was not what I was tested on. Though I must admit, that mentality served me well when I moved into upper-division courses.
I have the same habit....Like I was reading a book about economic and I stop reading (for now) when the book talk about game theory because I dot nothing about game theory.....the same with classic mechanic, I stop studying to learn variational calculus
Man, i really tend to do the same shit. It eats away your time like nothing.
I think there are many like you among physics and maths students. I'm one of them. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing.
Not a physics major (Electrical Engineering) but took a ton of extra physics courses. Stat Mech nearly destroyed me.
Don't feel so bad now
Tg
Haha
Has to be the best breakdown of the thermodynamic laws i've ever seen hahaha
I’m majoring and physics as well and this is my first year of undergrad and I’m having a hard time with classical mechanics as well and damn I love you for making me feel like everyone else struggles with it too 😭🤝
Sucker hahaha
Landau and Lifschitz vol. 1 was my lifeline. Good luck!
Why are you taking classical mechanics as a first year undergrad?
@@EliteTeamKiller2.0 he means newtonian mechanics. Not lagrangian/hamiltonian mechanics
EliteTeamKiller Hi! I honestly have no clue
I really think that thermo/stat mech is something that you have to see multiple times to be able to appreciate. I’ve probably covered thermo in depth in 4-5 courses in my undergrad and stat mech in 2 classes (one more in grad school yay!)
10 years talking about Stern-Gerlach experiment, I cannot relate more to this
I hate that experiment now
I really identified with your experience when you said you wished you’d developed your mathematical rigor beforehand. I came into university as a physics major but switched over to majoring in pure math and minoring in physics. Upon taking upper level and more rigorous math courses, I realized that a lot of what I struggled with early on, could be attributed to not knowing the math yet.
This youtube channel is gettin me hyped for my physics major
Quantum mechanics in my undergrad literally felt as hard as a major life tragedy. I tried hard to gain a deep intuition of QM the entire semester and it still feels blotchy.
Geometry of general relitivity was pretty tough. (Though it was taught as a mathematics course)
The prerequisite courses are differential geometry, algebra & differential equations. Recomended to be taken with differentiable manifolds.
That sounds really interesting
Sounds more like a first year graduate level class to me. It's pretty rare to find a mathematical treatment of general relativity in undergraduate physics programs. Then again, you said it was a mathematics course, so I can definitely see it.
@@EliteTeamKiller2.0 www-test.drps.ed.ac.uk/14-15/dpt/cxmath11138.htm
my current top 3 are:
1. plasma physics (deriving all the wavefunctions for differect scenarios, and using the momentum, continuity and heat equation. And on top of that; Landau damping)
2. Classical mechanics (should imo be taken later on after the fundamental maths courses)
3. Quantum mechanics (many new concepts, didnt have proper training in differential equations beforehand and SPIN :-P )
i so wish i could have taken plasma physics as an undergrad ... totally jealous.
Do you study the work of Cedric Villani ?
Classical Mechanics *is* a fundamental maths course!
Well, that’s part-joke: calculus and differential equations are of great help in dealing with it. But (the way the taught me) a whole bunch of maths was derived at the course itself, because it is not generally taught in maths courses.
so glad to see classical mechanics on this list i always thought i’m just a bad physics student for never understanding it
Mathematical methods in Physics. We had like 50 large theorems to learn how to prove in oral exam and like 50 000 smaller theorems.
Electromagnetism. We used Jackson. That says it all...
Poor soul. I never even touched that unholy book.
So im taking electromagnetism course right now and i decided to give it a try to Jackson's book, i gave up on the third page
Jilal Jahangir it’s a great book to have near as a quick reference, but not a good book to learn from whatsoever. It skips many steps in derivations (most of which are completely non trivial), and usually does not explain why the author is doing things the way he’s doing it. But unfortunately it’s still the most complete book out there. Zangwill comes close (and even has some topics Jackson doesn’t cover at all), but it’s not there yet (maybe next edition?).
We used Griffiths.
I just completed my first Jackson EM class. Great book, but I find it too encyclopedic. And the problems...worthy of PTSD on some scale!
I agree. Thermal/Stat-Mech was really demanding. I took it from Dan Schroeder (the guy who wrote the book), it was super interesting and deep but REALLY hard to wrap your head around at times.
Hardest physics classes?
Me: yes
Nice shirt.
Edgar Calleros Son goku?
Statistical Mechanics was definitely one of the hardest. I also took Atomic Physics, as an elective, and yeah it was hard. Mad props to you for taking it at the same time you took QM, that's some serious flexing right there. I was doubling in Physics and Chemistry, so I got to take 2 semesters of PChem, which is a lot like Statisical Physics (but with labs).
Had to nope out of a 4th year general relativity class when I got there having never heard the word "tensor".
Lol, procrastinating on my atomic physics take home final by watching video about why atomic physics is hard. Sigh...
Excuse me while I go calculate some rubidium. So much goddamn rubidium.
Mine was without a doubt Solid State Physics. My Analytical mechanics seemed hard at first but then just became a chore once I got the hang of it..but SSP was a class that I thought I would really like, but I never had it click in my head. Also we had 7 people at the start of the semester, and 4 people at the final.
I detested Solid State. My university made us take it in some form every year pretty much. Some of the early toy model stuff was fun such as finding speed of sound in a solid. Then came lattice structures and Brillouin zones and Miller indices. Horrid.
Let me first preface this with the following: I got my BS in physics in 2005, so it’s been a long time since my undergrad years. Watching this video had me nodding in agreement, and laughing out loud. There was no TH-cam at the time I was studying physics. I always felt like I was hitting my intellectual limit, if you will, EVERYDAY. There was never a day that went by where I didn’t feel feel inadequate as I was trying navigate through the 30 page solutions for my problem set of six questions 🤦🏻♀️ Needless to say, my best class was actually classical mechanics 😂 My worst? Electricity and Magnetism 😵💫 The one I was not prepared for was my nuclear and particle physics class…and quantum mechanics…both flew over my head, if im going to be honest. I can do the math, but I had no clue what it actually represented. I started getting back into physics recently after the concept of consciousness starting piquing my interesting…which then led to quantum physics…then quantum field theory…and now I had to review everything 🤦🏻♀️ It woke the sleeping giant in me and now I just need to see it through. I appreciate your videos because they’ve given some great tips on good reference books and textbooks to get to help with my sudden resurgence into physics again. Thank you! 😆
Do all us math majors and physics majors messy hair like this lmao
yea.....I kinda lost my comb for a week so I just stopped caring
Sometimes you're just too tired/busy to shave your face / look decent.
All that matters is what's In the brain...even if it's 7:45 and you're late for your 8am :/
C J I keep it short, less maintenance.
Yup 😂
4:09 "Thermo and statistical physics was more TdS than anything" well said!
I'm currently undergraduate student in third semester and the courses I hated the most until now were experimental physics: classical mechanics, electrodynamics and optics.
It's mostly because in the lecture you only get told some special cases and the formulas you are supposed to use in these cases but don't learn why the things are how they are. It's always like: "It's like that, deal with it!"
The worst of theses was optics because there were just too many different conventions used for everything.
A really annoying example would be Bragg-scattering which sometimes used half the scattering-angle for the Bragg-angle, sometimes the scattering-angle was just the Bragg-angle and once it was pi plus the scattering-angle, and everytime it was totally unclear which convention was used. The exercises were so arbitrary that the only real way to get good marks was knowing the results beforehand and then reverse-engineer what you need to do.
Still I was made to think that as an experimental phycisist you need to know the answer before you tackle the problem and then try to make sense of it, which is just not really my beer.
Sounds like u had a bad teacher. Trust me optics and edyn can be really interesting once though properly
For me it was Computer Organization. Basically how the hardware organizes data flow.
Even tho im studying cs I find physics extremely interesting although I don’t want to study it myself. Subscribed.
I definitely struggled with QM II in which we covered chapter 5 to the end of Griffith's. The homeworks were super challenging and so were the exams. I also struggeld with EM while it seems a lot of people didn't. Classical mechanics tends to be a very difficult class even for people who started off as physics majors since it's the first "real" physics class that you take.
Couldn't agree more about classical. I'm taking QM II this next semester. Was your EM 1 or two semesters?
My EM was two semesters. My professor was amazing but for some reason it never quite clicked for me completely.
Mohammad hi
Perturbation theory and the variational principle weren’t so bad for me, but when we got to scattering and berry’s phase ... rough times
...but then he killed himself lmao
Correct on classical. That was one of the hardest classes I ever took, everyone thought it was hard, even people good at it. That was literally the moment I saw how smart physicist professors could be. My professor didn't use any notes at all and could answer absolutely any question at all in the book without thinking, or cracking the book. In some of the classes, he would just ask us what we wanted to know. It literally made you(your convention :)) feel stupid. But looking back It wasn't really hard because a lot of things you could visualize, whereas other classes took a lot more effort to visualize problems. However, the main thing I learned was the amount of rigor needed to do other classes.
I like how all physics majors of many different universities go through almost the same experience.
Approximately the same.which = same.
Taking classical mechanics right now and I could not agree with your description more. I thought I was so good at classical physics because I knew all the equations and when to use them. Once I got to this class I realized you actually need to derive what you're doing and if you mess up in one place everything beyond it is wrong. Just going to have to forget everything I know and start from the ground up🤷🏼♂️
As a high school student my mind is already blowing up.
Mahan Pourfakhr i feel that
The math is a bug problem for me, especially when the profs are so up and down. I had my worst prof on advanced calc but my best one in complex variables for example. The only one left is PDEs for me now so I'm hoping I can do better in the physics side. I have thermal and quantum next year plus class mech 2 and statistical as a choice in the final year. I also have electricity and magnetism. Here's hoping I can get into the groove of things as things are so fast paced in my university, you can't catch a breath. I also might have research next fall as well since I couldn't find it in the summer. Wish me luck
You are the wolverine of physics (that's a compliment).
Keep posting you are such an inspiration !
Hardest class for me is Relativity. Having to learn differential geometry and understand completely in a week was very challenging.
Exactly why I'm planning on taking differential geometry before that class xD
That was a great description of the laws of thermodynamics
Stellar Astronomy, Quantum, and Cosmology. I haven't taken Thermo/Stat Mec yet but I've had to study special topics of both in 3 of my astronomy classes so, hopefully I'll have an upper hand. We'll see...
One thing that you talked about that I couldn’t agree more with is the lack of mathematical knowledge. Nothing frustrates me more than a physics course where I am introduced to a math concept that I have never used and expected to pick up on it immediately. Sure, I can memorize solutions but it feels so dirty to use something I don’t have a clue about. I’m trying to plan my math courses in a way that will hopefully prepare me for upcoming physics courses.
Classical mechanics 1&2 were my favorite classes in undergrad. I loved learning the math and principles behind complex problems I could see in the real world. Hardest was taking thermo and solid state at the same time
I thought electricity and magnetism was the hardest followed by mechanics. I'm an EE student tho
Started as a biology major too and currently having classical mechanics. I really, really love this course (I didn’t fully understand the calculus of variations part but still). I think a good teacher is mandatory in that kind of course (without a good teacher I can defo tell it would’ve been a nightmare). Here in Quebec, we do physics 1 and 2 as well as cal 1 and 2 in college before we even go to university (we start uni with classical), and physics 2 was my worst class. I have ptsd from it to the point that I’m extremely scared about electromagnetism next semester.
I guess, thinking about it, my three were all third year: Atomic and solid state physics, astrophysics, and optical physics. I found them particularly challenging because neither my study methods nor mathematics hadn't developed well enough (also missed half a sem due to unfortunate circumstances). I wrote out a 3 page latex doc trying to understand first order perturbation for atomic physics. Took it to my lecturer, and he said, "yeah, all you need is this last bit."
Thermodynamics was challenging, but mainly because we had a massive programming project worth a third of the final grade, and I was just learning basic programming in another class.
Having the flu a week before the final didn't help either.
This is the most honest channel ever 😀
For some reason I have more difficulty with classical physics in general. Relativity, Electromagnetism, quantum physics were all easier.
Honestly, Solid State Physics killed me. Though, that semester, I got the flu twice, and missed 4 of the 16 weeks, so that whole semester was terrible. I agree that Classical Mechanics was hard. It's like, everything you did before was just a nice sample, then you dug deep into the core of what you were approximating. It's like when you have to take Assembler programming in a Computer Science degree. You thought you knew what was going on, and you thought you knew how to code, but then realized that someone did all the heavy lifting for you.
is it common to have 16 weeks semester ?
not a physics major, but a comp sci major. God bless those who went before me, Assembly is quite annoying.
As a computer engenieer, I appreciate that much more now with that Assembler analogy, thanks!
Can confirm, solid state is scum
I was curious about Solid State Physics to getting really well with Solid State Chemistry....
Computational Physics and Chemistry was hard...
1. Atomic & Nuclear (actually failed). I suggest learning about the calculus of variations. I swear I'm not normally one to blame a teacher, but in this class we probably went a solid month of just chatting aimlessly before receiving a syllabus. We never even reached the point of discussing any physics on the topic, it was mostly chemistry and pretending that we knew how to calculate shannon entropy.
2. Quantum, passed but my teacher literally didn't teach. He'd end lectures after 20 minutes and just hang out. I liked that it was algebraic. Prof. pretty much only talked about arguably trivial integrals in class though. Offered rather little info on probability theory or anything like that.
3. Statistical. This was honestly the hardest course. I don't think I even had calc 2 when I took it. It was sooooooo brutal. You'll want to know a bit about multivariable calculus before jumping into this.
Easiest?
Any independent study. As long as you can keep your professor entertained, with relevant info, you're pretty much guaranteed an A.
For my undergrad experience, it was Electromagnetics, Quantum Mechanics, and Mathematical Physics (Math Phys was a 500 level graduate course concerned with real-world applications and solutions of Physics concepts, such as coordinate transformations, Fourier series, Legendre and Bessel functions, quantum mechanics, etc, and also using numerical methods and computers to solve problems that could not be analytically solved.)
I'm taking Mathematical Physics right now. I think I got 5% on the midterm. Send help.
I took Classical Mechanics straight out of Uni. Physics II, and hadn’t had differential equations yet. The professor was hilariously vague and unhelpful, but it made the homework assignments genuinely rewarding to complete (when we actually managed to complete them). Its made Engineering Dynamics a cakewalk though!
1) EM, but mostly because we were only taught vector calculus during the first lecture, and then we were expected to just run with it. I failed that class, but got an A in it next year. 2) Thermodynamics, for the exact reasons you put. 3) Solid-State Theory, which was mostly about superconductivity. I really struggled with this. Especially since you never end up with an expression like Ohm's law, i.e., an expression for conductivity.
Calculation wise, Classical Mechanic 2, Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics 2 were brutal but as for difficult concepts to even wrap your head around, Non-Locality was a custerfuck.
The words "behaviour space" and "cshs inequalities" still give me goosebumps.
For me perssonally it was relativistic quantum mechanics, grouoes theory and crystallography
Mathematical Methods in Physics is my demon
Well, I'm currently in my second semester of physics (first year) and I'm sadly struggling with linear algebra. I'm fine with the physics courses, but it is with the mathematics courses that the professors take way too much time proving all the theorems (with no apparent relation at all to any physics field)
Linear algebra can get super abstract. But honestly, if you can really internalize things like what exactly the relationship between eigenvalues and eigenvectors are, what the significance of a 0 determinant is, completeness, and different vector spaces, you'll get a lot more out of your first course in quantum mechanics. It gives you the tools to look at the schrodinger equation as an eigenvalue problem instead of a second order partial differential equation. Linear algebra is such a powerful tool once you get used to it.
When you get to odes and then pdes. You can skip entire lectures because all they do is talk about applications or theorems or even proofs. Then tests and assignments are so easy and straight forward lol
My shits the exact opposite , the math is fine but the physics is a fuckin nightmare
0:48 I really wonder how a biologist's brain work? How can a people memorize that much thing? I find even highschool biology hell. I start to study a year early, because if I don't I know that I'm going to fall behind. I only study 2 page a day! And it take almost a hour!
I got 83/90 in a classical mechanics and now my teacher refers to me as "Son Newton"
And you call yourself "Aeroelectrodynamic Boi from the deserts of Algeria" I think I'll call you Confused.
r/iamverysmart
Weird flex but ok
@@OcctySun Preposterous boast, but alas
@@CounterTheAnimatorocn1 Aberrant braggadocio, albeit granted
Its funny, I am a chemistry major and I decided to take Thermo+StatMechs in the same semester as my QM+Statmechs pchem course. I should note that I took pchem thermo in my previous semester. The differences are....incredible. At least where I was taught, half of our course was stat mechs for physics and my pchem class had I kid you not, one or two lectures near the very end. Needlessly to say, I was more prepared for my pchem class than the rest of my peers. The differences in thermo were pretty interesting too. We used cyclic rule alot in pchem as well as the interchange rule. We also did alot of assumptions which we could't really do in physics. While I did have an advantage in the physics course (I was one of the lucky ones who got a B in the class), it was not overwhelming.
I'm doing Optics and Therm next semester. I'm looking forward to it.
Classical Mechanics was the hardest lol You had to learn how to think in physics! Love your vids! I’m an EE major with Photonics Area Pathway and hope to go into a Physics PHD!
I know that feeling. Looking at a problem not knowing what it really us but getting done and right anyway. Its a hint of being a master feels like. I had this happen to me econometrics, and international economics
The Atomic Physics segment was spot on. We had 6 people in my class and my professor LOVED Stern-Gerlach
Maybe because he was more comfortable talking about it
The biggest issue with a lot of the units I struggled with was that we didn't have just a classical mechanics unit, or just a quantum mechanics unit. Instead they were mixed with other, equally difficult topics, so when it came exam time you needed to be on top of your game for multiple different fields for a single unit.
A couple examples of these units are Physics 2A, which was Quantum mechanics (covered the stuff you'd expect, solving and normalising wave functions of single particle systems in various different potentials) and EM waves (EM was went up to pretty complicated electrodynamics, didn't just stick with electro and magnetostatics).
Another really tough one for me was called Physics 2B which had solid state physics, special relativity and intro to general relativity and classical mechanics all in the one unit. Each topic on it's own was not too bad, but having to know all of them really well for the exam was tough.
The hardest unit I did though was simply called modern optics. I did this in my first semester second year, and it was the first time the unit was running. After the semester was over the university changed it to an honours level unit without changing almost any of the content. For reference, there were 16 people that enrolled in the unit, by the time the exam rolled around, only 8 people showed up, and of that only 3 of us passed. It covered everything from diffraction and interference to holography, non-linear optics and advanced imaging theory (Nano- and Bio-Photonics). On top of all of this we also had to do 6 labs, and write reports for each of them (compared to the usual 3-4 in other units) and do a 3,000 word review paper on a modern optics technique, including at least 20 citations from peer reviewed papers. It was brutal. I scraped through that with a 55% from memory.
Wow that's very different!!
Trig. lol, getting by though. Thanks for continuing to put these videos out!
Means a lot to know people watch. Good luck josh!
How’d u end up doing in the trig class?
So far, Numerical Methods and Differential Equations
quantum computing course was the hardest, as I am failing this semester.
I liked classical mechanics it is really simple. It is the thinnest volume in theoretical physics(Landau and Lifshitz).
There are only 3 systems of equations that allow you to solve anything. The difference is that sometimes some systems might not be useful and that is why you need to know all three. Otherwise any of them is equally good.
1) Lagrange equations. You need to know Lagrange function for the system(which is usually just a difference between kinetic and potential energies). Written equations are equivalent to Newton's laws. If something is conserved then you can use so called integrals of motion which simplifies differential equations to algebraic. Generalized momenta, coordinates and energy helps with math.
2) Hamiltonian equations. Same as the previous one, but used when you are interested in momentum instead of velocity(for example all photons have the same speed, but the momenta are different). Has simpler math.
3) Jacobian equations.
Atomic physics has to be the class that I look forward to the most. Thanks for the vid Andrew!
It was the most challenging mathematically, but super rewarding. Best of luck!!
I had the same experience with classical thermodynamics vs Stat.Mech, only slightly more so and for slightly different reasons. I barely struggled through classical thermo, but once we got into partition functions and canonical ensembles everything clicked for me and thermodynamics became very easy.
I took a high level course in Fluid Mech, and that got pretty gnarly. I never took the lab courses because I'm a theoretical physicist (and actually now I'm a mathematical biologist, moving in the opposite direction to you), but I heard some horror stories from my classmates. GR and String theory were surprisingly easy, but I had the advantage of having taken the math in advance.
Astrophysics 2 (cosmology) was the hardest undergrad class I had. I got a B in that class. Subatomic physics is a runner-up, the math was pretty challenging for the level I was at.
Feynman's lectures on statistical mechanics are fire. First time I found the subject enjoyable.
1. Graduate Mathematical Physics (Riemmanian geometry, group theory, topology)
2. Quantum Mechanics 2 (Quantum 1 was a walk in the park compare to the second half)
3. General Relativity (I was super into GR but had major senioritis so this class was super hard but only cause I didn’t put the effort in lol)
Fundamentals of Electromagnetism. Took me 3 fucking years but gosh golly I did it in the end.
love this video! I feel so related to your experience Andrew :)
I actually liked thermodynamics, it was my favorite. The statistical mechanics portion was then attributed when I took biophysics and basically combined both and applied them to biological macromolecules
I also took a course on series (summation on different series, power series, fourier series, fourier and laplace transform). Really useful on certain physics problems we face on applied physics.
I got an A in Electric Circuits 2 because most of the problems were about modelling mechanical systems into a form of transient RLC circuits in s domain and then solved using Laplace transform. I was good at using Laplace transform then. But I was actually weak at electricity concepts. And I could pass Automatic Control courses, thanks to Laplace transform. :)
You know, I'm not even a physics student (Going to go into business) and I'm here watching you talk about things I'll never study. I just like how you make the videos.
I knew some chemical engineering majors who got A’s in thermodynamics but struggled in second quarter physical chemistry
That's me brother
I'm not sure how its taught at other schools, but chemical engineering thermodynamics is exactly like he described in this video, and is taken after pchem. They are really different.
Thermo for engineers is very different than physics majors, it's way easy than what they need to do
@A M as a meche myself I think my version is probably the easiest lol sadly
I find it interesting that you have Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics on your list.
At the university I attended in Denmark, the exam for the physics majors with the highest failure rate was actually thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
Hey Andrew why don't you start to explain lessons and work en solving problems in considering physics.
By the way great vid 😃😄👍👍👍
I agree. I like watching your videos where you work on problems
Did you have anything specific in mind?
Andrew Dotson well Andrew i am a Biology major and we are taking some courses in mechanics the module is called "mechanics of a point " (if i explained it right because in Algeria we study only in French)
As Abdelmoula said, why don't you do some lower division mechanics problems. Then, to make the videos more interesting, you could describe the difference of those problems in lower division classes, vs. the big boy classes ("lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism," your words in a comment to me a couple weeks ago)
Jerry Smitherson Okay so have me solve an easier problem, then show how you could write it in a more sophisticated way so that the transition to “big boy” mechanics is smoother ?
Statistical Mechanics was hard. Our professor was able to get to quantum statistical mechanics. The problem was that I didn't take the thermo class, so I didn't understand the system. Partition functions were fun thought. I am a math and physics major. If you don't mind me asking, what math courses did you take?
Hi, I took the traditional calc 1 - multivariable/ vector calc. I also took a course in linear algebra, differential equations, real analysis, and partial differential equations.
Andrew Dotson Did you take both semesters of real analysis?
Since you took at least the first section in real analysis. I took quantum mechanics too, one thing that I didn't understand was Hilbert space. But just recently I was about to figure out why they use it. One of the main problems in QM going from finite to infinite, because sumations don't always converge. In real analysis, you find out that the reals are complete, i. e. Every Cauchy sequence converges, while the set of complex numbers are not. Notice that Hilbert space is a subspace of complex space. Also, Hilbert space is complete. I just thought it was cool.
Yeah the whole thing that makes hilbert spaces useful in QM is that the functions that live inside it are square integrable, which makes it possible to normalize them. What's really cool is when you learn how to "mix" hilbert spaces with a tensor product, and then use the completeness of the basis vectors to create a new, almost hybrid, eigenstate. And no, I didn't take the second semester of Real Analysis. I plan on taking it at some point, though.
Fluid Dynamics.
Mathematical Methods
Any experimental course (for the absurd amount of work that goes into it).
I've just started this year and I kinda expected this list ahaha The first impact was tough indeed but at the same time, let me say your videos make me want to keep going and try- so thanks!
Also, ps: your hair is the best
Stat Mech was the most challenging physics course. CM, EM weren't too bad. QM was a lot of work but not too difficult. SS was very challenging, but passed all my courses with very good grades. After completing the physics major, I went on to engineering school, more practical and not as difficult to succeed in school and find a job.
Love this video, Thank you!