[The Godfather]

Congratulations to all of you, if you are getting your High School, Associate, Bachelor, Master or Doctorate diploma.

Pat yourself on the back because you have accomplished something very important. And reward yourself.

Once again, congratulations

[OreoCookie]

I graduated last month, well, I handed in my thesis, that is

Pretty soon, I will be a `real' physicist (which will be the first time in years I have to change my profile from physicist in training to mathematical physicist in training )

[Cody Dawg]

That's really cool, OreoCookie.

WAY

What was your thesis on? We'd all like to hear about it. Is it published online? A close relative (father) is a physicist also with a very well known and respected university in the Northeast. (I think he is the head of the department now...he works with space projects and NASA most of the time.)

Congratulations!

[tikki]

one....more....semester.....so...tired....of....co llege....

[KeriVit]

Originally Posted by tikki

one....more....semester.....so...tired....of....co llege....

Don't tire too quickly. The "real world" aint all it's cracked up to be.

[Amorya]

Do you guys in the States graduate at this time of year? It's June/July here in England...

I'm a finalist this (academic) year, so assuming all goes well I'll get my BSc (in psychology) next time round. I'm quite looking forward to it, but on the other hand I don't want to stop being an undergrad... I'm not ready to grow up yet!

I plan to do postgrad study, funding permitting. Might have to work for a bit first, though, if I don't get any funding.


Amorya

[macroy]

Originally Posted by Amorya

Do you guys in the States graduate at this time of year? It's June/July here in England...

It's typically June for primary/secondary schools (although I wouldn't be suprised if there are exceptions) here in the States. But colleges is usually based on the semester. Semesters usually end in Dec and May. So depending on your study and course work, you can graduate in the fall or spring.. come to think of it.. there's also summer school... so I guess one can also graduate in July or August.

[rickey939]

Definitely, congratulations to all! Very cool.

[The Godfather]

Congratulations Oreo Cookie

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg

That's really cool, OreoCookie.

WAY

What was your thesis on? We'd all like to hear about it. Is it published online? A close relative (father) is a physicist also with a very well known and respected university in the Northeast. (I think he is the head of the department now...he works with space projects and NASA most of the time.)

Congratulations!

Thanks Cody

If you want to have a look at it, check out my website at university and click in the proper link. Although most people who are not in the field of physics will get much out of it.

This Friday, I got my key and my employee's access card (up until now I had a key and a guest's access card, though), I'm still waiting for my contract for my PhD position, though These last months seem like heaven and hell in one place

BTW, my professor will have a sabbatical in a year (he'll be in Santa Barbara), so I will (fortunately in some sense, unfortunately in another) be free to spend one semester at a university of choice, so I might go to the States (an incomplete list of choices: University of Texas, Austin, and Berkeley) or maybe back to Japan (Kyushû University or Tôkyô University).

[boots]

Austin Rocks. 'Nuff said.

And congrats to all you graduates. And much success in your new lives, whatever they may hold.

[SSharon]

I just turned in my last paper this past Thursday. I am graduating from the University of Maryland. It's been a fun 3.5 years, and I am actually surprised at how hard it is to pack up and leave this place.

The plan now is to take 6 months off to work and then go to law school.

[d4nth3m4n]

man, i wish i were done with school. one more year. meh, december graduation.

[Kevin]

I am glad to be done with it all. It was ok.. But I hate having to take inane buffer "make more money off students" courses.

[Jens Peter]

I handed my master thesis in last monday - so I'm graduating in january. It's exciting at one point, and scary in another...
Just found a nice apartment and hopefully I'll get a job soon

[GSixZero]

Congrats OreoCookie! My best friend is working on his masters in Physics in Stuttgart right now. He'll be done in a year or so.

[Morpheus]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

If you want to have a look at it, check out my website at university and click in the proper link.

Funny enough, the title of my PhD thesis in mathematics is "Nullforms, Polarization and Tensor Powers", though polarization in your context is something completely different.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by GSixZero

Congrats OreoCookie! My best friend is working on his masters in Physics in Stuttgart right now. He'll be done in a year or so.

Cool. What's he specializing in?

[boots]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I am glad to be done with it all. It was ok.. But I hate having to take inane buffer "make more money off students" courses.

????

Not sure what kind of courses you're talking about. Most undergraduate degrees are not designed to be the end all of learning, and certainly not technical training programs. The programs of study are designed to expose students to a variety of ways of thinking. Natural sciences "know" things differently than mathematics. And literature/languages have a different way of understanding things. Religion uses still other ways of knowing. They all have some overlap. If you missed all of this, I am sorry. It really is designed teach students how to know things, not what things to know.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

Funny enough, the title of my PhD thesis in mathematics is "Nullforms, Polarization and Tensor Powers", though polarization in your context is something completely different.

Hmmm, well, it's polarization of media. I use zero-, one- and two-forms, though

Polarization here refers to a physical effect: if you subject a crystalline solid whose potential has certain symmetry properties (or rather it does not have a certain symmetry property ), you will see macroscopic accumulation of charge on the surface of the crystal. Mathematically you describe this in the framework of quantum mechanics: you assume you have found solutions to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. Usually, the stress is quantified simply as a time-dependent potential with fixed periodicity lattice (i. e. a maximal subgroup \Gamma of the additive group (\R^d,+)). I allowed for a periodicity lattice which varied in time. By a certain scheme you obtain effective dynamics, i. e. you select a relevant part of the spectrum of the Hamilton operator (which under suitable and fairly general assumptions has a pure-point spectrum) and project onto that part of the spectrum. By a mathematically exact method, you obtain an evolution on that relevant part of the spectrum which in turn can be used to compute equations of motion.

BTW, if you happen to have your thesis online … or have you published a paper about it (say, on the arXive or so)? What was yours about?

[Morpheus]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Hmmm, well, it's polarization of media. I use zero-, one- and two-forms, though

I'm working on representation/invariant theory. Let G be a complex reductive group G acting on a vector space V. I'm interested in finding invariant functions for the simultaneous action of G on several copies V \oplus...\oplus V. Then polarizing refers to a classical functor that produces invariant functions for several copies of V.

Nullforms in my setting are not differential forms but forms in n variables of degree d (viewed as SL_n representation ) that can not be distinguished from zero by SL_n-invariant functions. (for example: SL_2 acts on the quadratic forms in two variables x and y. The determinant/discriminant is an invariant function and hence x^2 is a nullform ).

....well, the whole thing is not yet finished, I'm busy writing things up all the time now, but till summer everything should be done...

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by boots

????

Not sure what kind of courses you're talking about. Most undergraduate degrees are not designed to be the end all of learning, and certainly not technical training programs. The programs of study are designed to expose students to a variety of ways of thinking. Natural sciences "know" things differently than mathematics. And literature/languages have a different way of understanding things. Religion uses still other ways of knowing. They all have some overlap. If you missed all of this, I am sorry. It really is designed teach students how to know things, not what things to know.

I know what they "claim" it was designed for. But if you don't think Colleges make students take more classes than is needed to get more money... I have a bridge..

[boots]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I know what they "claim" it was designed for. But if you don't think Colleges make students take more classes than is needed to get more money... I have a bridge..

As part of that institution, all I can say is that I'm sad for your if this is the view you came away with.

The money isn't in the number of courses, it's in the number of students. In fact, it costs a lot to staff those courses.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by boots

As part of that institution, all I can say is that I'm sad for your if this is the view you came away with.

Uh, I have had several college advisors tell me they have been pushed to get students to take more classes, or classes that wasn't needed to get more money.
So yeah.

I didn't know this my freshman year, but my sophomore year after I was given my "recommended" classes. I told my counselor I wanted all the FAT trimmed, meaning all the classes that I didn't need OFF. The list shorted a bit.

They try to "recommend" classes by adding them to your schedule as "advice" as they call it. But sometimes they wont tell you it isn't necessary.

Now you may not do this, and that is cool. But there are others that do.

The money isn't in the number of courses, it's in the number of students. In fact, it costs a lot to staff those courses.

The more classes you take, the more you pay out.

[boots]

Come back and make some rational arguments when you understand the budgeting process at a college or university.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by boots

Come back and make some rational arguments when you understand the budgeting process at a college or university.

Ah here is the pretentious straw-man argument. Boots every college is different. Accept it.

[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Thanks Cody

If you want to have a look at it, check out my website at university and click in the proper link. Although most people who are not in the field of physics will get much out of it.

This Friday, I got my key and my employee's access card (up until now I had a key and a guest's access card, though), I'm still waiting for my contract for my PhD position, though These last months seem like heaven and hell in one place

BTW, my professor will have a sabbatical in a year (he'll be in Santa Barbara), so I will (fortunately in some sense, unfortunately in another) be free to spend one semester at a university of choice, so I might go to the States (an incomplete list of choices: University of Texas, Austin, and Berkeley) or maybe back to Japan (Kyushû University or Tôkyô University).

Congratulations to you. I have a great deal of respect for physicists working with the very small.

Question: The talk_polarization, p. 11, shows the use of Schrodinger's equation. I am curious about it (without being an expert in the field, far form it and without the pretention of understanding the whole thing, I am just genuinely curious) but what is the advantage of that equation over Heisenberg's matrices? Is that more for mathematical convenience (easier to process) or more like a philosophical choice? Just curious, as I understand that Heisenberg's and Schroedinger's are somewhat equivalent.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Pendergast

Congratulations to you. I have a great deal of respect for physicists working with the very small.

Question: The talk_polarization, p. 11, shows the use of Schrodinger's equation. I am curious about it (without being an expert in the field, far form it and without the pretention of understanding the whole thing, I am just genuinely curious) but what is the advantage of that equation over Heisenberg's matrices? Is that more for mathematical convenience (easier to process) or more like a philosophical choice? Just curious, as I understand that Heisenberg's and Schroedinger's are somewhat equivalent.

Point one is: Heisenberg's matrices are just representations of operators in a basis. In principle, you are dealing with infinite matrices, but since Heisenberg knew nothing about this at the time he conceived his theory, he thought of it as `very large' matrices.

There are two ways of viewing quantum mechanics, one that is more a `classical point of view', the other is a more `quantum mechanical point of view'. The one you are referring to, the Heisenberg picture, is the more classical point of view: the system has a fixed state, similar to the initial conditions in classical mechanics. Here, the observables change in time, i. e. you have one state, but the position observable changes in time as to give the mean position for each time. In a way, you recover something like x(t), the position at time t.

In the Schrödinger picture, you have the opposite point of view: the states change, but the observables stay the same. Here, you have your ruler, which gives the position, which does not change in time. But since your state changes, so does the mean position at time t. Since both are equivalent, you can work in the one you'd like.

If you are interested in specific states, say solutions for the orbitals of the hydrogen atom, you choose the Schrödinger picture. If you want to say something without referring to specific states (as in quantum statistical mechanics), you usually use the Heisenberg picture.

[Volks]

Don't you grad students at some point ask yourself, what the hell am i doing? It's one thing for someone like Isaac Newton to come up with the groundwork of physics. It's another to become so specialized that you spend your entire life on something like the Schrodinger equation. Even if you combine all imaginative brain power of all human beings on earth, we will still never truly grasp the universe as it really is. In 5 billion years or so, science has already predicted that the sun will scortch and engulf Earth, leaving the entire solar system uninhabitable. Is this science we are develping now just being used to evacuate our lifeform to another solar system? Did humans migrate to Earth this way and did they somehow lose their knowledge?

[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Point one is: Heisenberg's matrices are just representations of operators in a basis. In principle, you are dealing with infinite matrices, but since Heisenberg knew nothing about this at the time he conceived his theory, he thought of it as `very large' matrices.

There are two ways of viewing quantum mechanics, one that is more a `classical point of view', the other is a more `quantum mechanical point of view'. The one you are referring to, the Heisenberg picture, is the more classical point of view: the system has a fixed state, similar to the initial conditions in classical mechanics. Here, the observables change in time, i. e. you have one state, but the position observable changes in time as to give the mean position for each time. In a way, you recover something like x(t), the position at time t.

In the Schrödinger picture, you have the opposite point of view: the states change, but the observables stay the same. Here, you have your ruler, which gives the position, which does not change in time. But since your state changes, so does the mean position at time t. Since both are equivalent, you can work in the one you'd like.

If you are interested in specific states, say solutions for the orbitals of the hydrogen atom, you choose the Schrödinger picture. If you want to say something without referring to specific states (as in quantum statistical mechanics), you usually use the Heisenberg picture.

Thanks, and congratulations to you again!

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Volks

Don't you grad students at some point ask yourself, what the hell am i doing? It's one thing for someone like Isaac Newton to come up with the groundwork of physics. It's another to become so specialized that you spend your entire life on something like the Schrodinger equation. Even if you combine all imaginative brain power of all human beings on earth, we will still never truly grasp the universe as it really is. In 5 billion years or so, science has already predicted that the sun will scortch and engulf Earth, leaving the entire solar system uninhabitable. Is this science we are develping now just being used to evacuate our lifeform to another solar system? Did humans migrate to Earth this way and did they somehow lose their knowledge?

Why? As a physicist, you learn to deal with approximations, that's your skill in a way. What Newton (and Leibnitz, by the way) did was in no way different than what Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Pauli and all the other founding fathers of quantum mechanics. Newton's theories were as complicated/easy as quantum mechanics. In the same sense, Newton's equations of motion are useless for many applications.

It's also not the job of a physicist to philosophize, he can do that in his spare time (and indeed, many do).

[The Godfather]

When technology rakes the fruits of quantum mechanics, they will be rich, and you won't... even if they haven't figured out the answer to the universe.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by Kevin

The more classes you take, the more you pay out.

Your college/uni sucks then. I know I pay the same no matter how many courses I take (They limit me to 18 hours unless I have special permission though).

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

Your college/uni sucks then. I know I pay the same no matter how many courses I take (They limit me to 18 hours unless I have special permission though).

So you have a book cost quota?

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by The Godfather

When technology rakes the fruits of quantum mechanics, they will be rich, and you won't... even if they haven't figured out the answer to the universe.

We already do for quite some years

[The Godfather]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

We already do for quite some years

You have figured out the answer to the universe, really?

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by The Godfather

You have figured out the answer to the universe, really?

Nope, I should have deleted the second part of your answer. I was referring to putting quantum mechanics to good use. But that's actually something that's been done for years. Transistors, LEDs, organic LEDs, superconductors (which do have a few commercial applications already), atom clocks (GPS), squids (used in NMRs), NMRs itself, PET scanners, neon lights, etc.

Quantum Mechanics is everywhere!

[wdlove]

Congratulations to the graduates, a job well done.