Recent content by sharpstones

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    Programs Start a Physics & Astronomy Club: Ideas & Advice

    Online there are many great resources for physics projects, you can learn a lot and really don't need much prior knowledge to complete them. Getting the parts though for the projects will require some work, and perhaps a little bit of fundraising as well. Perhaps you could start with...
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    High temperature Superconductors: Cuprates

    Phil anderson recently posted to arxiv an interesting writeup on high Tcs. I thought it was a pretty curious and an interesting read, for an outsider at least: "Last words on the cuprates" https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1612/1612.03919.pdf I assume you are looking for postdocs then, if...
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    Programs I will soon graduate as a physicist, I am lost

    Apply for a PhD program! Then your funding is covered in most top schools by research and teaching assistant work.
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    Programs I will soon graduate as a physicist, I am lost

    I think material science is a very appealing direction for physics students who have a strong interest in the applications of quantum physics into the semiconductor / nano world. It also is a fine career choice for future technical / research work given the large amount of different R&D being...
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    Studying Should someone still learning basic physics worry about....

    I second ZapperZ's suggestions. Physics Today provides very nice reviews to cutting edge research topics which are at an approachable level for physics undergraduates. I also would not get overly concerned about getting the wrong impression from reading "laymens translations" of physics...
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    I Nitrogen-Vacancy centres in Diamond for NMR spectroscopy

    The diamond NV center is a spin 1 system, where the spin state can be read out optically. More specifically, it fluoresces more when it is in the ms=0 spin ground state as opposed to the ms=-1 or ms=+1 states. The energy splitting between the different spin states is sensitive to the magnetic...
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    Journals suitable for undegraduates

    I second ZapperZ comments. Read through Physics Today and Physics World, and if a certain research highlight catches your eye then be adventurous and check out the original publication. Physics publications in Science and Nature magazine are also nice because they have the research summaries...
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    Should I take Solid State Physics?

    If you have any plan to pursue condensed matter physics in graduate school, or have an interest in nanotechnology, semiconductor tech, quantum computing, solar cells... pretty much all the interesting applicable parts of physics research...you should take the course now. A good undergrad solid...
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    How Can We Prove that a Curve with Perpendicular Derivative Lies on a Sphere?

    My friends and I have been trying to work this one out all night, but to no avail. If a curve has the property that the position vector r(t) is always perpendicular to the tangent vector r'(t), show that the curve lies on a sphere with center the origin. We know the dot product of r(t) and...
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    Future study in Quantum Information Theory/Computing

    I am currently a freshman at rutgers university and I am planning to do a double major in Physics and Mathematics with a minor in Comp Sci. I am very much interested in the research fields of Quantum Information Theory and Quantum Computing and I was wondering if anybody could recommend a track...
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    Give use your best perpetual motion device ideas

    This thought was inspired by reading the other thread "perpetuum mobile" where ZapperZ posted an interesting (but of course flawed) perpetual motion device. It was fun to analyze and to figure out why it didn't work and I was wondering if anybody else had neat ideas that seem to very...
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    Is Earth's gravitational pull equal to an object's falling force?

    well yes, saying "gravitational acceleration is independent of mass" is of course an incorrect statement, but it's because your teacher is using it to loosely. In an intro to physics setting unless you are talking about the motion of planets you almost always talk of g as being = 9.8 m/s^2...
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    Trying to learn QED are my assumptions correct?

    When mass is constant, momentum is a function of velocity and velocity is a function of time. So would it be incorrect to say that the more precise your time measurement (or the smaller timeframe you are looking at) the more uncertainty in the position of the particle a la Heisenberg...
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    Question regarding Feymann Diagrams and other QED things

    I'm sorry but this explanation does not seem quiete satisfactory because the example given shows an electron and positron interaction. I want to know what happens in an interaction between an electron and a proton. I think i have kinda grasped that because a positron can also be depicted as an...
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    Question regarding Feymann Diagrams and other QED things

    I have been going through many books on QED, trying to get a general non-mathematical feel for it before I take a course in it and I have come across some questions that I have not been able to answer. Nearly all of the sources I have gone to refer to Feymann Diagrams as a easy way to depict...
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