Changing track...

[mmejavert]

(x-posted to _scientists_All right, I'm heading towards being a physics/astronomy major at the University of Pittsburgh. Thing is, I had two semesters of high school physics that were taught by an awful teacher, and therefore I have a very small background in physics. Because I really don't want to struggle through calc-based physics next semester, I'm looking

Comments

continuation

[jerryrigged]

A hard part about physics is that it's very heirarchical. Like, you just can't do general relativity before you've got a lot of earlier physics and math concepts down pat. This is unfortunate in that sometimes it feels like, "this stuff is boring...how come I never get to do anything cool?"... (I don't know. There's actually a fair amount of cool stuff in the intro classes, I think... but it's not as flashy, you know?) ... so, you really have to give it some time. There may be some neat astrophysics courses at the freshman or sophomore level, but like, talking about what goes on inside stars is hard... you need fluid mechanics (which needs mechanics) and probably E&M and probably quantum (if you want to talk about the fusion)... etc. So it's something that can't really be done in depth until maybe junior or senior year. I don't quite know why I've said that, but just to sort of give you a head's up. Like, I think that I remember looking at an "introduction to astrophysics" course description in the book my freshman year and being all like, "yay, introduction! how hard can it be?" and then I saw that it was a 400-level course and had three lines of prerequisites. Oops. But anyway, if you are very interested in that stuff (which is very interesting!) and you find that you like solving the problems and don't mind the math and like seeing how the universe works in a very solid and well-defined way, you will get through to the "interesting" stuff. So like, perservere and stuff.
Sorry about the novella, here. Good luck!
--jerry (who is a random guy who knows tamma)

Re: continuation

[tammabanana]

I was always highly amused, as an astro major, that I couldn't take "Intro to Astrophysics" till my senior year.

Re: continuation

[mmejavert]

Heh. Astrophysics doesn't even enter into the undergrad studies here at Pitt. You have to wait until grad school to get that. I don't really mind; Intro to Quantum is my junior year. (Of course, it's optional course for me...)

Re: continuation

[mmejavert]

Novella? No problem. Thanks so much for all of the information! :)

Re: continuation

[jerryrigged]

I dunno. I may have made that word up. But I imagine "novella" to mean "little novel". Maybe I could have said "novelino"...sounds more physicsy.

Re: continuation

[silverdragon262]

Don't worry -- it's a real word, used to refer to a short novel.

Re: continuation

[jerryrigged]

yay! though it occured to me (too late, as per usual) that she may have been making some sort of pun on the "no----? no problem!" wording pattern (eg, maybe, used car commercial: "no credit? no problem! we'll just have Uncle Mario saw your leg off if you don't pay on time" or whatever). Curse my brain which is unable to cope with things in real time!

Re: continuation

[jerryrigged]

hmm. that cosmology book (0521422701) also has a few pages up as PDF on amazon.com ... It looks somewhat technical. I'd wait until I was familiar with vector calculus (the one with the "evil upside down triangle," as tomo so eloquently put it), at least, i think. Maybe you should be familiar with special relativity (page 1 has 4-vectors and what look like wedge products. Man.). It looks like it might be a senior-level textbook to me (based on my cursory examination of pages 1-6. heh). ... that said, it does look like it tries for a "more physicsy" GR than I had (which was very formal, mathematically. I don't know enough about anything to know if it's better to be more or less mathematically formal).