parent:: logs
the year I questioned the status-quo
My last log was ends almost 1.5 years ago, at the beginning of my BSMS programme in IISER Mohali. A lot has happened between January 3, 12022 (day I started the (online) classes at IISER Mohali), and now (end of March, 12023).
more articles:
- attending NIUS 19.1
- 4 years with electrodynamics
- inculcation
- math wiki v2
- semester 1
- moving to mohali
- summer ‘22, semester 2: reluctance to physics, primarily, shift to mathematics, majorly
- semester 3: lessons from MTH201
- winter ‘22: nius
- semester 4: lessons from MTH410, the lore of manifolds and higher
semester 1
The story doesn’t start here, not yet.
Still, I studied the following during this time
- real vector spaces
- groups
- I actually remember the day I learned about cosets of subgroups and thought well vector subspaces (picturing a plane/line passing through origin) are subgroups too, what are its cosets?
- statistical mechanics
- the problem of a self-gravitating fluid/rigid/gas body, and “ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium”
moving to mohali
This story actually starts on 16th April, ‘22.
reluctance to physics, primarily
In May ‘22, I started to say, jokingly, that I won’t take physics major because
- I will be bored because I’d know most of the content at least up to third year
- I will benefit more from mathematics major courses because eventually I am interested in theoretical physics
- I can teach the content in the physics major curriculum (to whoever wants to listen) and that will mean I will study and grasp the content either way
More I said this to my friends, more I went onto follow it. This was a very neieve ambition initially…
But one needs to consider the struggles I was having with phyics
- statistical mechanics: more I read and re-read the same content, the question of “deriving thermodynamics from Newton’s laws” made less sense, moreover there were so many opinions online
- the foundational courses (worldwide, actually) are too trivial
shift to mathematics, majorly
I was interested in math from the fifth grade. This isn’t a story of how I shockingly discovered the crazy fancyness/use of the quadratic formula, or the definition or something. I was genuinely studying group theory in the first semester itself, without any though of its real applications in any case. (It really is very satisfying to study it, wish to get back to it this fall.)
What really struck me first was the construction of starting from , and rigour in real analysis in general. Everything started to feel very different.
Things I followed/studied:
- Balakrishnan’s non-linear dynamics
- Balakrishnan’s quantum mechanics
- Fredrich Schuller’s two lectures
- a fluids talk
- total derivatives
- ifferential forms and exterior derivatives
lessons from MTH201
- courses give discipline and confidence
- teaching people brought far more spike than I thought
- manifolds theory really unmotivated without (Gauss’s) geometry of surfaces
- geometry (and topology) is so beautiful!!
the workshop course was fun tho
lessons from MTH410, the lore of manifolds and higher
other stuff that I did
academic curiosity and inculcation
obsidian, wiki, workstation
how little increments help
One of my friends commented how, by using Obsidian I can learn things by very little increments. This I think is a important bit. One does not need digital note taking tools, just need to have the ability to preserve and recover old notes.
more stuff I wanna say
campus life
- the freedom just because you’re in a closed community
plans for summer ‘23
- Some differential topology, and clear a ‘F’ grade lol.