I didn’t post the past couple days because it’s been a little bit of a mess for my, studying-wise, but I’ve decided I’ve just got to own up to it and move on! So Thursday I had planned to work on Python (starting on the Computational Physics text as discussed in my previous post). That didn’t go quite as smoothly as I hoped! Before, I was using basically a faux-dev environment via the Codecademy course. Now, I need to get something set up to actually run Python on my own machine. This isn’t actually very difficult, but somehow I managed to have to do three different installations and several computer reboots and various mucking around that managed to frustrate me and waste a lot of time without actually even getting to the stuff I wanted to do. But at least I now have a working version of Python 2.7.13 and a vague sense of how to run modules through it. Success! Sort of.
Thursday afternoon I was supposed to finish up my chapter on matrices. However, I scheduled a call with a professor from my department that I had been procrastinating, and that basically took my entire afternoon. Not that it was a long call—it was not even 20 minutes—but because talking to people is a Big Weakness of mine. I know it sounds kind of silly, but I’ve always dreaded it. I remember crying as a little girl if my dad made me tell my order directly to the McDonald’s cashier. I handle it a little better now, but I’m still much much more likely to try to handle any business over email or text. Talking on the phone makes me nervous, and video calls can be downright terrifying. So once I knew I was committed to making a video call, it really wiped out my ability to concentrate for the rest of the day.
Of course, once I took the call, it was totally fine. These things never turn out to be as horrible as I worry they will, and yet I still worry every time. I also got to discuss some potential projects that sounded quite interesting, and he sent me some items to take a look at (including a Python program—I am so glad that I’ve been working on my coding already!!), so things are starting to feel almost Real in a scary but cool sort of way.
So anyway, I tackled the matrix stuff on Friday. And hoo boy was it a whopper. I’m pretty sure the last couple sections I was barely hanging on to understanding and definitely wasn’t able to complete the examples on my own. I’m sure singular value decompositions are child’s play to some, but my brain felt all stretched out trying to follow along. This was a little discouraging, but I am trying not to be too hard on myself. I can always revisit the material later!
I also read another chapter in Bob, this one on special relativity. This is now the third time that I’ve reviewed relativity, so it’s starting to feel pretty comfortable. Which is great! Even so, there managed to be some stuff in here that I hadn’t encountered in Tipler and Mosca. It’s a big topic, after all, and a crazy one no matter how familiar I am with it.
I intended to also do the next chapter in Mathematical Methods, this one on normal modes, but I ran out of energy/motivation/whatever. So I intended to do it yesterday. But I didn’t. Sooo I guess I’ll have to write it into my schedule for next week.
Today’s fun “new” fact: The relativistic headlight effect causes light emitted from a moving source to be concentrated into a cone to a stationary observer. This effect can be observed in synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons
Photo by Georg-Johann / CC BY-SA 3.0