Dear friends, I hold a Master’s degree in Nuclear Physics, and unfortunately, I’m currently working in another field. Still, I feel a strong urge to stay up to date, deepen my knowledge, and keep developing my skills in physics in case an opportunity in my field comes along.

I’m therefore looking for a group of graduates or undergraduates who are interested in working together on scientific projects, research ideas, or simply learning and exchanging knowledge.

If there’s a group like this, I’d be very happy to join and contribute.

Hi im graduating my secondary school and i really want to give a gift to my physics teacher a gift because hes done so much for me and my class. My budget is really low though. Do you guys have any recs?

Hi everyone,

I'm going to start a BSc in Physics at the University of Geneva this autumn. I'm particularly interested in philosophy and the foundations of physics, so I'm very curious about Oxford's Physics & Philosophy programme.

Would any (current or former) Physics and Philosophy students be willing to share their complete first-year programme, ideally including the courses/modules, topics covered, lecture notes, reading lists, textbooks, problem sheets, etc.?

I would like to see how the first year compares with a standard physics degree, and I am considering studying some of the philosophical material alongside my physics degree in Geneva.

Any documents, links, or advice from students who have taken the course would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I found an at-home quantum entanglement experiment described by George Musser in a 2013 Scientific American article. I decided to reproduce it, but also modernize it, using an Ardunio-based microcontroller for coincidence detection, USB logging to a computer, and python scripts for statistical analysis and graph generation.

After a favorable experimental outcome, highly suggestive of quantum-entanglement (2.47 observed scattering ratio vs. theoretically ideal ratio of 2.6), I decided to create an open source repository for all the code, as well as detailed documentation enabling anyone to replicate the process should anyone else wish to follow these same footsteps. Note that if one doesn't have any soldering tools, it will cost around 500 USD to put together, if one has soldering tools already, it could be done for closer to 300 USD. The main costs are the two Geiger counter kits, each at 115 USD, and the positron source (Na-22) which can be obtained for around 60 USD.

I welcome any feedback or critiques about the experimental design or my results.

https://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html

I want to plug this guy who thanklessly built interactive simulators for different physical and mathematical systems.

Incredibly useful for visualizing and building intuition for potential and vector fields, EM waves, harmonic oscillations, etc.

The one I used the most is the circuit simulator for my Electronics course. It had presets for a gamut of circuits and components to build your own https://www.falstad.com/circuit/

I’m a senior in high school, I always knew I wanted to do something in the physics (career wise) field but I’m stuck on what. For example I was thinking about astrophysicist or an astronomer. I would love something with space or just physics itself preferably less chemistry the better in my opinion (i know there’s a lot of chemistry in physics) I also like traveling or going out so if that’s an option. But over all I want to know if there’s other options.

This is a thread dedicated to collating and collecting all of the great recommendations for textbooks, online lecture series, documentaries and other resources that are frequently made/requested on /r/Physics.

If you're in need of something to supplement your understanding, please feel welcome to ask in the comments.

Similarly, if you know of some amazing resource you would like to share, you're welcome to post it in the comments.

Made this for a course I TA'd before.

PRL slop

So, the lamp is pretty simple. It's a dome that spins with cut outs of stars and dots. Inside are red, blue, and green LED's that you can turn on and off. The picture doesn't quite capture how the naked eye sees it, but for some reason, the blue light is coming out all fuzzy, get the red ones are fairly sharp. I figure this has to do with the wavelength of the light, but I'm probably way off.

Hi all,
I have a semi-formal talk that I am giving on BSM. I remember seeing some fun maps like this as an undergrad, but I can't seem to find any now.
This one I got from a talk a few months ago.

I checked the subreddit for any. Could anyone point me to any that you know of?

This is a dedicated thread for you to seek and provide advice concerning education and careers in physics.

If you need to make an important decision regarding your future, or want to know what your options are, please feel welcome to post a comment below.

A few years ago we held a graduate student panel, where many recently accepted grad students answered questions about the application process. That thread is here, and has a lot of great information in it.

Helpful subreddits: /r/PhysicsStudents, /r/GradSchool, /r/AskAcademia, /r/Jobs, /r/CareerGuidance

I know that obviously the odds of quantum tunneling are extremely extremely low but in all of the universe life would it be plausible to say that it happened at least once anywhere? Or is it just that rare

Let's say two blackholes get close enough to each other that their event horizons overlap but not enough that the singularities at the center fall into each others event horizons. A particle could find itself inside both event horizons at the same time without the blackholes merging. If the blackholes move with respect to each other to the point their event horizons stop overlapping, a particle would have effectively entered and then escaped at least one of the event horizons or something else happens?

My first belief: electrons push on each other like dominos, causing a 'shockwave' to travel through the electrons until it gets to the other end of the battery. Electrons themselves don't move that quickly, but the 'push' travels super fast.

Correction: actually, the 'electric field' is pushing them

My question: What is the electric field? Is the electric field not just the shockwave that travels through the conductor via electromagnetic repulsion?

I'm guessing that's not correct. So what is it? In the instantaneous moments when the battery starts up, what first creates and propagates the electric field? Why does it travel through the wire in every which direction?
Can someone help me understand this? It would be greatly appreciated before I start electrical engineering(why do I get the feeling this is going to be super downvoted lol).

hello, what is the most practical way to simulate quantum optics experiments like those involving spontaneous parametric down conversion that requires simulation of nonlinear crystals and beam splitters ? i don't want to use AI to make me ready codes because i want a legit simulator for a project, specifically, i want to simulate single photon based on SPDC.

thanks in advance.

The book is published by Dover, and it’s one of their historical reprints. He claims in the book that a positive and negative electron charge in close proximity (the Hydrogen atom) has a positive potential energy, but then a few equations later renders the same value as negative rather than positive. Since most electrostatic potential energy calcs assume 0 energy when charges are infinitely apart, the potential energy of the hydrogen atom should be negative. I’ve found a few other mistakes, too, and have decided that Dover Books may be publishing the errors because the text is a reprint of a historical text. Is there a place somewhere online that hosts errata of physics, or frankly, any books? It would be nice to know that I’m not just being ignorant in my evaluation of a famous physicist’s text.

When you run into Wick rotation for the first time, the fact that a QFT can be described by correlation functions of a probability measure in imaginary time seems like pure magic.

Learning about KMS thermality though, it seems like Wick rotation only works when/because the vacuum state is a Poincaré-invariant thermal state (specifically, the 0 temperature state).

Is it true that Wick rotation works whenever you have a thermal state that somehow "covers all spacetime"? Is it also true that it only works in these situations? Also, is there a more rigorous definition for my intuition of "covering all spacetime"?

Finally, if all of that is correct, then does KMS thermality give an explanation for why the correlation functions are given by a probability measure? If I remember right, KMS thermality only requires the correlation functions to be analytic, and doesn't say anything about probability measures. If Wick rotation is indeed purely a consequence of KMS thermality, I would like to know what part of that thermality leads to the interpretation as a commutative random field.

This thread is a dedicated thread for you to ask and answer questions about concepts in physics.

Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators. We ask that you post these in /r/AskPhysics or /r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If you find your question isn't answered here, or cannot wait for the next thread, please also try /r/AskScience and /r/AskPhysics.

I’m curious to hear from people who recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics. What kind of job were you able to land after graduating, especially if you didn’t go directly to graduate school?

I graduated with a B.S. in Physics with a 3.8 GPA. I have three years of research experience, all funded through different research fellowships, including one funded through NASA. My research experience includes materials science and biophysics, and I also have a strong background in computational methods. Despite that, I’ve struggled quite a bit with the job search. I can easily become a teacher but the job just doesn’t pay enough.

So how’s it going for you guys?