Book: The Six Core Theories of Modern Physics

Great book. Written by Charles F. Stevens, it covers classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical physics, special relativity and quantum field theory. However, if you're not a math person, you'll probably want to leave this book alone. It concisely covers all of these theories in a grand total of 220 pages, which is quite a feat. Don't let it's brevity fool you, because it is definitely a dense book, especially if you haven't been previously introduced to special relativity and quantum mechanics/field theory. The words to equations ratio is about 1:1, which is generally not a good thing for leisure reading, but the conceptual explanations are very clear. It would be best used as review by a college physics student, or as a first step in understanding the more complicated theories that a high school student will (eventually) encounter  while studying science and engineering in college.

Secondly: Math

Math is hard if you don't know what you're doing, but it's beautiful if you do. And the transition from not knowing math to knowing math gives a feeling of accomplishment, dare I say elation. Ok, fine, I'm a nerd/geek/spaz/wedgie magnet, but it's true at all levels of mathematics, from elementary school to research. The ability to know a theory well enough to apply it to a variety of different situations is. from my perspective, a very human characteristic. Of course, every animal is doing an enormous number of calculations to perform any sort of movement, but humans are the only ones to have consciously elucidated a small fraction of the calculations that occur in our brains at every moment. And that's why I love it, it pulls the shroud off of many aspects of the world.

Yeah neuroscience is cool too, but no one concretely knows whats going on. And from what I've seen, biologists tend to dismiss the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which causes a splitting of universes at every decision point, and I'm a huge fan of it. Not to say that anything in science is concrete, but mathematics has been around long enough that the community is capable of filtering out any b.s. that arises.



   

First of All

The point of this blog is to promote cross disciplinary thinking. While attending Georgia Tech for a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering,  I noticed a lot of competition between students not just in the classroom but also outside of it. I believe classroom competition is beneficial to learning, but bickering about which major is more difficult and putting down non-engineering majors is detrimental to the community as a whole. Most students don't realize the insights that are gained from areas outside of their own field of study, generally due to their belief that what they are studying is a "harder major". I, for one, cannot draw very well and think that art school might be more difficult for me than the average person. However, math and science are my forte, so engineering was an obvious choice. There is a lot of snootiness in engineering circles, and a lot of snootiness in art and science and business circles as well, and I think people need to see the brilliance in each other. I welcome ideas from people, and will objectively evaluate the idea, not the person.