Who is behind abstruse goose

You must have had such harrowing experiences in the past, you can no longer afford to take any chances. When Steven Weinberg visited Oxford in there were a dozen or so alien space craft hovering above the city for a whole week. This may not have had anything to do with him, but the whole experience was quite unnerving. They only went when they found that the local shopkeepers were refusing to take their money, which was in plasma form. A couple of decades ago, it was widely advertised that string theory had made a fundamental contribution to topology, of which mathematicians were in awe.

The claim was that one topology could legitimately be converted to a different one via the singularity of a black hole. This is then used to get people to believe the string theory unification stuff, which would not otherwise be taken seriously. The Martians think that humans are becoming too advanced technologically — so they deliberately send an agent in disguise to lead the humans astray in order to halt any real scientific advancement ….

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Skip to content. And this lead to a new Principal. The Holographic Principal. That said, I'm looking to take a class where I can learn tensors, since I've heard they're very useful for GR.

One kind of course where tensors are rigorously treated is differential geometry and differential geometry is extremely useful if you want to go very far into GR, like the stuff that 0celo and Slereah routinely read about. Meanwhile, while I am aware there is a branch in mathematics called multilinear algebra which is basically what tensors are , I don't remember whether it is taught as a course by itself.

Secret Hmm. I've been trying to figure out whether to take differential geometry or topology first. Is one helpful for the other? Well, balarka, 0celo, Slereah and the many maths guys in math chat will be a better person to ask about details on differential geometry. For me, the only thing I knew is that differential geometry frequently deals with manifolds, and you need to have a topology to build these things, so yeah topology really helps.

Might as well multiping them here to read these messages:. Well I've already gotten Balarka's opinion, so I guess I'll hope Slereah and 0celo7 can give me advice. Secret Oh by the way, are you an undergrad? I am currently in my 2nd year chemistry PhD.

Oh wow. While I like to ramble, you guys have no problem to determine when I am serious. DawoodibnKareem my great-grandfather used that joke to make his great-grandfather laugh. SirCumference I got taught tensors in an independant class. SirCumference Then when you try and apply it to a physics scenario, you'll get bogged down in all the technical maths detail that's irrelevant when it comes to the physics :P.

Mithrandir Right, but damn if it's not satisfying to feel that whole "understanding" feeling. Even if it does get in the way sometimes SirCumference understanding isn't a binary thing though - it's more like an onion, with many layers of deeper and deeper understanding.

Mithrandir Indeed. Though my point is that having a deep understanding is just a great feeling. It may add needless complexity to the physical applications, but it counters any feeling of tedium or memorization.

Tbh that makes physics more enjoyable at times. Idk, just my opinion. Slereah The closest we have to that kind of class is a "topics in mathematical physics", which is a graduate class Slereah What makes you so sure that I'm not your great great great great grandfather? I've already indicated that I can time travel into the future. Slereah I mean the course description for Intro to Differential Geometry says it includes an "introduction to tensor analysis".

I'm just deciding whether to take Intro to Topology before or after Diff Geo. BernardoMeurer It was Abstruse Goose. SirCumference In my university, the topology modules were kind of a pre-requisite for the differential geometry modules. ACuriousMind Good morning! And thank you! DawoodibnKareem Huh. Here, Intro to Topology just requires multivariable calc, whereas Intro to Differential Geometry requires both multivariable calc and linear algebra.

I've taken both of those prereqs, but I'm surprised that there's no obvious order for higher classes. SirCumference Oh, the differential equations course was different again, and I can't remember what the pre-requisites were.

This was hundreds of years ago. SirCumference Well, if physics classes are requiring lots of memorisation, there's a good chance they're not the best physics classes, for a start I'm surprised with how much I say to my tutor group "of course, I can't remember this [equation etc.

They should be able to teach a 'good' level of understanding without going ridiculously deep into the details.

In other words, if you want to go into mathematical details, there's a chance it's the maths and not the physics you're enjoying I'm so tired Oh, umm, I think linear algebra was transitively prerequisite for differential geometry. Mithrandir Well in my experience, EM 1 was a ton of memorization because I was taking the beginning of Calc 3 along it, and wasn't caught up with the math in the beginning.

Special relativity wasn't much better, despite me knowing the math. Whereas every math classes from multivariable calc onwards including linear algebra and differential equations just seemed so based on intuition. The order of the concepts were taught so perfectly that everything made sense. Why do so many users of Stack Overflow expect that someone will be able to tell them what's wrong with code that they haven't included in the question? It wasn't like I was flustering to figure out calculations for new operations, which I didn't understand until the following semester.

SirCumference So it sounds like the maths classes are just taught better than the physics classes :P Fair enough. But there really isn't much memorisation in either SR or EM if it's taught well and neither of which require a detailed mathematical understanding in order to understand the physics.

Chemistry is where you do the memorization :p. Mithrandir That's partially true. But the physics courses have also always been much, much harder than my math ones because I'm a physics major not math yet. The speed is unreasonably fast and the homeworks are obnoxiously hard. Math was never a slouch, but at least you weren't expected to apply the concepts in surprising and difficult ways after just learning them.

SirCumference This is what makes you good at physics though :P. In the end though, I have a stronger desire to learn about the universe than just math. I just wish it weren't so merciless. It does get slightly noticeably easier around masters level or it did for me anyway , once things have sunk in a bit. Mithrandir Huh, really? I thought it kept going uphill Mithrandir Oh, never asked: What kind of physics are you pursuing?

SirCumference Hmm CPT symmetry, open systems, the boundary between what is and isn't quantum, then there's a bit more of the slightly more mathematical stuff like reference frames in there as well. This paper is turning to a nightmare. Oh bother. Emilio Pisanty. I felt it needed a tad more detail but adding another answer would've been too much.

Q: Can we reduce the scientific terms? PhysicsMeta No, we can't. Why are you talking to a robot. Slereah it's the only way get an intelligent conversation around here It's really afternoon but good mrning.

Okay I will calm down with a nice physics conundrum. The action is invariant under a trivial gauge transformation.

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