“How was your day?” “Oh, not that great. I didn’t get a lot of work done, so it was kind of disappointing.” Be honest: How many times have you answered this question with a variation of the above answer? If you’re anything like me, the answer is a lot. When we think about our day, we jump to the work we did. If we didn’t accomplish a ton, we call that day a waste. Even…

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I just wish I could do that job all day long. I know that I would love it. This is probably wrong. The problem isn’t that you won’t like the job. It’s that you are basing your judgement on an idea. You think the job will be great because you are imagining it to be so. When we first encounter something novel, we are overloaded with new experiences and interesting possibilities. This gets us excited,…

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If you’ve ever listened to a scientific presentation or read a piece on some research topic, you know it’s super easy to get lost. Even if you have a vague idea of what’s going on, the sheer density of many presentations or expositions can be intimidating. Couple this with the tendency people have to give too much information or to assume too much of the reader, and it’s no wonder that most scientific work is…

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The above word is one that I think a lot about as a physicist. That’s because there are two ways in which the word is used around me, with one being very detrimental to students. The first is the mathematical use of “trivial”. This is often tied closely to something being true or a solution by definition. For example, if you are working with a matrix equation of the form Ax = 0 (where A…

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When I was an undergraduate, I learned all there was about physics and mathematics.1 I learned how to wield the tools of calculus, how to wrestle with differential equations, how to employ the machinery of quantum theory, and how to zip through classical physics problems using Lagrangian mechanics. In essence, I learned the tools of the game. This was a key part of my education. It gave me the bedrock for graduate studies. I became…

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This year was a good one for me. I was able to write two posts a week on a consistent basis. The length of each piece varied, but I showed up, week after week. For that, I’m happy. That being said, there are things I want to change in 2020. For one thing, I became unsatisfied by the end of the year with the kinds of topics that I was covering. This might sound funny,…

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I’m always on the lookout for what makes a great explanation tick. If I don’t know anything about a topic, what’s the best way for me to accelerate the process of learning? Conversely, what are the signs I should be watching for that indicate I won’t get anything out of the material? These two questions occupy a lot of my thinking because of my interest in education. Not only do I want to improve how…

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Imagine you’re trying to learn quantum field theory, and you just got to a tricky part: deriving the LSZ reduction formula (don’t worry, you don’t have to know what this is!). The calculation and algebra are a little messy, particularly if you’re working with the fermionic case. When going through the derivation, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. In these cases, I find it helpful to ask, “What’s the story here?” This…

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I never use my notes from class. Honestly, do you? I’ve been a student for over a decade now, stretching from elementary to graduate school. I don’t remember exactly when I started taking notes, but it definitely happened all throughout secondary school. Since then, I’ve been an obedient student, taking notes in each class and making sure I jot down everything the teacher said. I remember the odd time I saw someone not taking notes.…

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