/sci/ - Science & Math

>Dirac adjoint
>Dirac algebra
>Dirac bracket
>Dirac comb
>Dirac–Coulomb–Breit Equation
>Dirac constant
>Dirac delta function
>Dirac equation
>Dirac fermion
>Dirac field
>Dirac gauge
>Dirac hole theory
>Dirac large numbers hypothesis
>Dirac matrices
>Dirac measure
>Dirac membrane
>Dirac monopole
>Dirac notation
>Dirac operator
>Dirac picture
>Dirac sea
>Dirac spectrum
>Dirac spinor
>Dirac string
>Dirac's string trick
>Dirac–von Neumann axioms
>Abraham–Lorentz–Dirac force
>Antiparticles
>Canonical quantisation
>Canonical quantum gravity
>Exchange interaction
>First class constraint
>Fermi–Dirac integral
>Complete Fermi–Dirac integral
>Fermi–Dirac statistics
>Kapitsa–Dirac effect
>Energy–momentum relation
>Helikon vortex separation process
>Light front quantization
>Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics
>Negative probability
>Path integral formulation
>Primary constraint
>Quantum electrodynamics
>Singleton field
>Spin magnetic moment
>Time-variation of fundamental constants
>Transformation theory
>Vacuum polarization
>Virtual particle

>>15251239
>Einstein

There are some better examples of genius out there

>>14955781
"Dirac discovered the correct laws of quantum mechanics for relativity simply by guessing the equations." - Feynman

Formerly >>12750260

Funny rotating numbers and funny spinning vectors edition.

Talk maths.

Should he be as famous as Feynman?

Hey /SCI/ I am a physics student. I want to boost my physics skills. I see a lot of posts on here about how to improve mathematics skills but I never see any related to physics. I'm in my 2nd year and I want to study upper level topics on my own time. I started looking into lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics as well as some electrodynamics. I am currently in multivariable calc and I will be in diff eq and linear algebra next semester. I started looking at some of the classical mechanics stuff and it didn't seem to difficult but I don' t know what to do when diff eqs show up. I am going to look into learning how to solve some ahead of time this summer. What mathematics should I focus on strengthening the most? And of those how in depth should I go into them? Should I learn math ahead of time before I learn the physics that I want to apply it to or should I learn both the physics and math at the same time.

>>10007810
come on, what's a cooler and more manly nickname than "Pam"?

>Dirac would have made a fortune if he had patented the Dirac equation. He would have had a royalty on every television, walkman, video game and computer.
Was Hawking just exaggerating as a joke, or did Dirac really invent TV, video games, computers, portable music players, etc?

Say who your favourite mathematician is.
Fuck off.

Paul Dirac.

Modern day scientific work requires a lot of team work and co-operating, but some of the biggest contributors to science were autistic as hell. Are we missing out on their potential nowadays?

>Dirac said “I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it.” This ex-plains a lot. Dirac’s famously taciturn and precise nature spawned many “Dirac stories”. Dirac once fell asleep during someone else’s lecture, but woke during a moment when the speaker was getting stuck in a mathematical derivation, muttering: “Here is a minus sign where there should be a plus. I seem to have dropped a minus sign somewhere.” Dirac opened one eye and interjected: “Or an odd number of them.” One further example concerns a conference lecture he himself gave, following which a questioner indicated that he had not followed a particular part of Dirac’s argument. A long silence ensued, broken finally by the chairman asking if Professor Dirac would deal with the question. Dirac responded, “It was a statement, not a question.”

What the fuck was his problem?

>>8291961
go read the works of the homie Pauly D

Last 2 digits of your id is your IQ.
If third to last digit is 1 then your IQ is last 3 digits.
Begin.

What does the symbol '∂' represent?

I know some of you know very much about quantum mechanics. I'd be thankful if you help me understand the Dirac equation.

I read about it yesterday and some things are not fully clear to me. I understand the equation was supposed to be a relativistic version of the Schrodinger equation and Dirac wanted time and space variables to appear of the same order. The gamma matrices are generators of a Clifford algebra and the solution function psi is a 4-dimensional complex vector called a spinor. What does that mean physically? In the Schrodinger equation psi is a complex valued function which I can imagine as the probability density. But what is a spinor? How can I think of it physically? Why does it have to be a 4-dimensional object? I mean is there a physical reason beyond the purely abstract mathematical argument that 4 is the minimal dimension for representation of that Clifford algebra?

I also read the calculation why the Dirac equation is invariant under a very weird action of the Poincare group. Why does the group action look the way it does? How has this been derived in the first place?

Last question: What do spinors have to do with spin? Or what even is spin? I know mathematically spin is a subgroup of the Clifford algebra and a double cover of the rotations. How does this come into play in the context of the Dirac equation and how does it relate to spin as an observable?