A Day in the life of a Grad student August 30, 2006
Posted by gantech in External Links, Fun.add a comment
This made my humour reading for the day !! Loved it to the core !!
6:30 Wakeup and lie awake in Bed 6:31 Realize you spent $18 on last night's dinner, means no eating out for the next 6 weeks 6:32 Hit snooze button. Go back to sleep. 7:00 Wake up suddenly with heart in mouth when you realize you didn't hit the snooze button--you turned it off. 7:01 fall asleep again. 7:44 Wake up with heart in mouth again. 7:45 Ready to go to school, will shave tommorrow, will eat early brunch at (Denny's/Penny's/Lenny's/Dinko's whatever cafeteria). 8:03 Arrive at school Realize your foreign officemate arrived earlier today must have got more work done 8:04 Pass by Advisor's office, chat with Secretary to find out if he is coming in today. He is, darn. Need to start work on the draft due this afternoon. 8:15 Read electronic mail 8:20 Delete mail from students taking CMPSC201 regarding questions about the class. Hate your TA job. Depression: too much work to do today 9:00 For jumpstart: go to Pepsi machine. 9:05 Kick Pepsi machine; promise yourself to call up the company and ask for your money back. Wonder why they would beleive you.
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1:00 Group Meeting with advisor 1:14 sudden awareness of one's shallowness resentment towards foriegn officemate for sucking up to your advisor Get reminded by your advisor that you need to do some more work for your literature survey. 1:51 Advisor hands you the reddened copy of your draft for corrections 1:51:02 The 49 second urge to murder advisor begins!! 1:51:52 Realize that he controls your assistantship/grade/graduation possiblity/graduation date/all job opportunities/and the rest of your life. 1:52:53 Thank him 1:52:54 Thank yourself for not saying something stupid to your advisor. 1:53:00 splitting headache #1 1:59 Check electronic mail, don't reply though, you are too busy to do that 2:06 More generic cola 2:17 Oh No, it is my turn to cook tonite2:30 Sit through the class you were told to sit through 2:39 Look outside the window make unrealistic plans to quit this degree program and take up a job. Wonder why blonde girls are so pretty. 2:48 More perverted day-dreams. Close the office door and open a few .gif files. sharpen pencil 3:06 worry about never graduating time to write a letter--NOT! no time for that. rearrange desk call up bank; see if you have any money fear of losing aid next Fall Read latex manuals to figure out how to put &$%&% in %$^% format 3:43 watch the clock make plans to do a all-nighter tonite Vow to watch only 2 TV programs 4:58 Notice Advisor leave 4:58:01 Sudden sense of freedom Go home for quick, short dinner break. 9:00pm Come into the office...............
Wow !! That was cool.. (uhh.. just hope that I don’t enter this attractor’s limit cycle.. )
thanks to Kmap for the link
Statcounter gives stats using Google Maps !! August 21, 2006
Posted by gantech in Something Interesting.add a comment
This seems to be pretty cool !!
Quantum Mechanics – An Introduction by Julian Schwinger August 20, 2006
Posted by gantech in Books, Physics.3 comments
Suddenly (but not without reason) I decided to drop the course OOPS and take Quantum Mechanics by Arvind instead. I remember almost nothing of the first course in .. hold your breath.. Chemistry.. that I did on Quantum Mechanics. My discussions (actually rather than discussions.. it has nearly always been me asking questions and Aswin ending up giving a long lecture) with Aswin on theoretical physics (usually Cosmology.. but many times on other aspects of Physics too) have always enthused me to take some courses on basic theoretical physics. However this is the first concrete step that I am taking in that direction. I hope to do atleast 2 more .. Classical Mechanics and Statistical Physics before I complete my Dual Degree here.
Ok.. now coming to the subject matter of this blog.
He starts off defining what is a “Causal” and “Deterministic” theory at the same time clearly differentiating between the two. Then he goes on to describe the two limiting cases of classical behaviour namely the Discrete and Continuous models and how they are unified. He then gives the example of the wave and particle nature of light to illustrate the above point. Then he goes on to describe the “atomistic” and “statistical” nature of microscopic phenomena using the example of Atomic spectra for the atomistic nature and the classical electron beam interference experiment for the statistical nature. After describing the theory of Measurement, he goes on to say why we can’t measure the properties of an object at the microscopic scale without disturbing it because of the atomistic nature of things and why we can’t correct for those measurements because of the statistical nature of things. This piece was particularly cool !! Using the above arguments he goes on to describe Quantum Mechanics as a Causal but only Statistically Deterministic theory.
After this I did not understand everything as I had understood what he had said so far. nevertheless.. I shall make an attempt to tell something. He starts off on Symmetry describing particles using wavefunctions, particle creation operator and how all these result in the creation of “Quantum Field Theory” unifying the two limits of Classical Physics models already described. Then he goes on to describe how developments in technology helped them create higher energies to study particle interactions which resulted in the field of “Quantum Electrodynamics”. Though the last particularly difficult to read, I really enjoyed reading a major part of the Intro. It will go a long way in making me ever more attentive in my Quantum Mechanics class and learning more about wonderful subject.
Browsing through his life history, you can find that Schwinger was an outright genius. His first physics paper was at 16 and his Ph.D at 21 with claims that he actually completed his thesis at 18 itself !! I can hardly wait to learn more about Quantum Mechanics to fully appreciate his achievements.
(btw does anybody know of this guy..apparently a 15 year old M.Tech student at the CSE dept in my insti.. working in Cryptography under Pandu I saw him on Times Now yest and want to know more about this rare specimen in my insti)
Feels nice to be back in the blogosphere after a long time. My first post after coming back to IITM.
