:: The book's focus is on getting the reader to have a deep enough understanding of quantum mechanics to understand why a laser works, why an integrated circuit works, and why we think a high temperature superconductor works. ::
Yay! Oh, please let the library have this!
And I'm as interested in how he handles the math as in the physics itself: all the math I've used in quantum applications was four-dimensional, which is hard to make accessible.
:: ...even if it proves undescriptive, mathematicians may find value in the work done by superstring theorists. ::
Bwahahahaha! I'm sorry, I should be more sympathetic, but-- Bwahahahaha!
For years now, I've been wondering how, exactly, string theory is considered physics. Because what they seem to be doing is what mathematicians do: "Oh, these theoretical constructs are so pretty! Let me poke at it more, and see what other pretty falls out!" Which, yanno, is what people are expecting you to do, if they're funding your mathematical research, so that's okay. (Well, it depends on who's doing the funding, how okay they are with that, but it is certainly what we would call a known risk: all pretty and no application.)
But to hear a physicist baldly admitting that yo, he's in this for the math, not for the physics? I am very amused. :-)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-01-22 12:27 am (UTC)Yay! Oh, please let the library have this!
And I'm as interested in how he handles the math as in the physics itself: all the math I've used in quantum applications was four-dimensional, which is hard to make accessible.
:: ...even if it proves undescriptive, mathematicians may find value in the work done by superstring theorists. ::
Bwahahahaha! I'm sorry, I should be more sympathetic, but-- Bwahahahaha!
For years now, I've been wondering how, exactly, string theory is considered physics. Because what they seem to be doing is what mathematicians do: "Oh, these theoretical constructs are so pretty! Let me poke at it more, and see what other pretty falls out!" Which, yanno, is what people are expecting you to do, if they're funding your mathematical research, so that's okay. (Well, it depends on who's doing the funding, how okay they are with that, but it is certainly what we would call a known risk: all pretty and no application.)
But to hear a physicist baldly admitting that yo, he's in this for the math, not for the physics? I am very amused. :-)