/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6922970
This is just the nature of things.

There are always technical issues and delays and what not. Better that they experience them on the ground than in the air or in orbit.

>>6870217
Rosetta landing today, Orion launch in three weeks. It's a good month for space.

>>6810892
>>6811097
Most of the research being done in plasma physics these days is researching space plasmas (mostly in planetary or stellar atmospheres but some research is done on large scale plasmas as well like SNRs), or laboratory plasma physics studying instabilities/waves, damping mechanisms, behavior of multi-species plasmas, effects of shear on plasmas, etc etc.

There's also a whole subfield of dusty plasma research that's sprung up over the last 20 years. When you introduce small dust particulates into a plasma they become charged/magnetized and this dramatically alters the plasma behavior (one of the most notable effects being that the timescale of plasma dynamics and instabilities drops by a couple orders of magnitude)


And then there's fusion which is a whole separate beast.

>>6810411
>The Big Band came from nothing.
False. like Swing, Big Band was an offshoot of ensemble Jazz styles popularized in the mid 1920's by band leaders like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.

Big Band's characteristic tempos, rhythms, and ensemble composition all stem from its Jazz roots, especially the focus on brass, woodwinds, and percussion over the string ensembles associated with more pre-20th century classical styles.

There is an abundance of physical evidence in the form of recorded albums from different bands and artists of the era showing the gradual progression and evolution of Big Band and Swing from their common Jazz progenitor.

>>6809414
Don't worry about embarrassing yourself. Nobody goes into undergraduate research already having a thorough understanding of the material (if they did they'd probably be doing their own research instead of working under a mentor).

Doing research, especially as an undergraduate, is as much about learning new physics and new skills as it is about the actual research work.

When I started doing plasma physics as an undergrad, I was halfway through the first semester of my third year E&M course. I knew next to nothing about plasma physics except that the guy teaching our class did research with it and that he was a pretty cool guy. So I asked him about his research after class one day, the discussion kept going all the way to his office, and by the end of the talk I was his new research assistant.

Our department didn't have a proper plasma physics course, so everything I learned about plasma physics I learned as a result of working for him. He went out of his way to make sure I was learning the material as we went along, too, giving me books and papers to read, talking to me about the physics of what we were doing during our lab meetings, giving me smaller experiments to try on my own, etc.


Doing research as an undergrad is a fantastic experience and I can't possibly recommend it enough. You learn a ton of stuff you wouldn't normally learn, you learn a ton of skills that will be applicable elsewhere, and nothing says "give me this job/grad school offer" like having a couple of posters or presentations under your belt and a gleaming letter of recommendation from a mentor.

>>6809370
GR is based heavily in tensor math and metric transformations between different curvilinear reference frames. The gist of it is that motion through 4-space due to gravitation depends mainly on three things - manifolds, metrics, and matter.

Manifolds are your geometry - a global topology comprised of sets of locally flat coordinates
Metrics define your inertial paths (in GR, inertial paths are paths of maximum proper time)
Matter, both how much of it and how its arranged, determine your metric solutions.

Or to put it another way - the presence of matter determines the paths that other matter can travel relative to it. Unfortunately I'm terrible with the actual mathematics of GR.


Check out Hobson's General Relativity if you want a proper, mathematically rigorous explanation.

>>6808876
>27
>BA - doubled in Film and Lit, BS - doubled in Physics and Astronomy, currently in PhD program for plasma
>Working as a TA, think I finally found a professor I'd like to work with though so I'm hoping to get an RA position next year.

>>6809196
Spent the last two years of my undergraduate studies working on plasma physics, especially on damping mechanisms and the effects of shear on plasma waves. Did a poster and a short talk last year and we've got another poster that we're sending to the APS meeting at the end of the month (don't think I'll be able to go to the meeting myself though).

Started grad school this year, already found a professor I want to work for. They're doing some really cool research here with plasma shear and dusty plasmas so I'm really excited to get involved.

Happy to talk about this kind of stuff if anyone's interested. Hope some more of the plasma/fusionbros on /sci/ contribute to this thread, I always love hearing about what other groups are working on.


>>6809335
Honestly - I've found that the best approach is to just ask. Contact one of the professors involved in the project, ask if you could come by his office this week and talk to them (face to face meetings are always better). When you show up just explain who you are and that you're interested in getting involved with the research they're doing.

Unless a project is already oversaturated, professors rarely turn down help.

>>6706303
Started my first year of graduate studies. Taking Classical, E&M, and Math Methods.

Just finished my last TA assignment for the week. I'm honestly looking forward to teaching the lab more than any of the classes.

There's a Survey of Plasma Physics course next semester that could be pretty cool though.

>>6686099
A female lead is fine. Hell, even Scarlett Johansson as the lead isn't inherently a bad thing.

But when your lead character is being deliberately directed to play a role with all the emotion of a brick wall, there's no reason to be invested in the character or what they're doing.

It was a poor script with poor directing (sorry Luc Besson, I still love Fifth Element).

>>6684410
The reward of science is in what all that hard work leads up to.

You don't live for the six hours of deriving formulas on a blackboard, you live for that "Aha!" moment when everything suddenly clicks and you can see the solution and how everything fits together.

You don't live for the month of data collection, you live for that moment when you compile all that data and find the result you were looking for (or even better, a result you weren't expecting).


I feel like it's a lot like working on a building or mechanical project. The work and method itself can be very gratifying, this is true, but what drives people to do it is that moment where you step back and see what all the work led up to, whether it's a new bookshelf, a restored car, or a scientific result.

>>6684836
Didn't mind the whole '10% of our brains' thing. "Limitless" took the same shtick and worked it into a fun, interesting, character-driven story.

But the film is... is just terrible. It's "Transcendence" cranked up to 11 - two hours of pretentiousness wrapped up in a couple shootouts and explosions. "Lucy" is trying to be something it's absolutely not. What should be a fun little action flick tries desperately to cram in as much artsy and abstract material as possible - random documentary footage, dull, emotionless, monotone speeches that drag on forever, they even manage to somehow work in Morgan Freeman getting a flash drive equivalent of the Monolith from 2001.


My point is, there are more than enough reasons to hate this film without nitpicking stuff that falls under "suspension of disbelief".

>>6676288
https://mega.co.nz/#!9oFExQ7Q!yTGBekZiZ2EvEzYiKOmF_wBqmDnsAalCrM5jEIZ4ExM

Here you go, let me know if it doesn't work

>>6675973
>>6675991
>>6676039
I can load the full article (21 pages), if other people aren't able to access it I'd be happy to reupload the paper somewhere else for /sci/ to read.

Looks like an interesting read.

>>6625411
Not yet, just starting PhD program this Fall. Would you recommend them?

>>6624854
Plasma physics incoming:

Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
- Francis Chen

Introduction to Plasma Physics: With Space and Laboratory Applications
- Donald Gurnett

>>6615152
Precisely my point. Anyone could do it in theory but it takes someone with Walt's kind of qualifications to do it as well as we see portrayed in the show.

The entire point of Walt's character is that he's an overqualified man who is resentful and spiteful over how much he feels like he's 'settled' in his life.

>>6615090
While there are certainly some universities that have more prestigious programs than others, the list of "best" schools is going to be different for every student.

Picking a school comes down to finding the program that fits you best and that's something that requires a case by case approach rather than a universal ranked list

>>6614047
I think he's referring to the symbol used in electronics schematics

>>6614448
>I'm very courious about what do you people think of Breaking Bad in a scientific standpoint;
I think it's an excellent drama and it does a fantastic job of following the guidelines of reasonable suspension of disbelief when it comes to how science/chemistry is portrayed in the show (the magnet scene being one of my favorites).


>Would a science teacher really know how to synthetize meth and make awesome explosions so easily (having the right tools)?
Plain old regular mediocre quality meth? Sure.

Producing meth is not a terribly difficult process - people can make it in gerry-rigged labs in basements and trailer homes around the world. What is difficult, and where Walter White's unique, overqualified background in crystallography and chemical physics comes in, is producing a product with such a high level of chemical and enantiomerical purity.

The method White is portrayed as using in the show to produce meth yields a mixture of two chiral compounds - one which is psychotropic, one of which is not. Doing this process on its own would yield something like a 50/50 mix, but Walter's method not ensures that the product is chemically pure and that you get the most product out of your supplies.


tl;dr - any science teacher with a basic understanding of chemistry could probably manage to cook meth without blowing themselves up, but not just any teacher could produce a product as pure as that portrayed in the show.

>>6604300
If you're just looking for information on electronics, go with "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It's not very reader-friendly but it's arguably the largest and most complete reference guide to all things electronics.

That said, if you want to learn more about the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism - give Griffith's "Introduction to Electrodynamics" a try (and pick up a copy of "Div Grad Curl and All That" to give you a quick crash course in vector calculus if you haven't already taken it).

>>6601911
You're on the right track OP.

Start by doing some research on the faculty at your school. All of the faculty will have web pages through your department's website which discuss their research, what they've done in the past, what they're working on now.

Find a couple of professor's doing research that sounds interesting to you. Rank them and starting one at a time from the top:
Email them, telling them you're interested in their research and would like to meet with them
Meet with them and discuss their research in more detail, tell them you're interested in doing research work and ask if they'd be willing to take you on as an undergraduate research assistant. You'll probably get a 'yes' from either the first or second professor you ask unless they're not doing any research or funding is tight.

As an undergraduate research assistant you'll start off doing mostly grunt work - taking data, adjusting setting on experiments, crunching data, making plots, making more plots, etc. As time goes on though and you learn more from your professor and from your classes, you'll be given more responsibility and more opportunities to do work on your own.


Good luck OP!

>>6593257
Not as good as the original but came a lot closer than I thought it would.

The updated graphics were great, NDT comes across as genuinely excited and enthusiastic, the show manages some great, simplified explanations of complex topics without dumbing things down or oversimplifying (the explanations of stellar spectroscopy and field theory come to mind).

I was skeptical of the heavy focus on historical figures especially after the so-so segment on Bruno in the first episode, but they ended up being some of the best segments of the new series and the episodes built around Herschel, Patterson, and Faraday ended up being some of my favorite episodes


Honestly - I'm really hoping they decide to continue the show with another season. There's still a ton of topics they could cover.

So at this point it looks like we're going to set our filamental quenching study on the backburner. We'll still work on collecting more data when we have the time but it looks like we're going to be shifting priorities to a building a new chamber.

My prof is one of the co-investigators on the new MDPX apparatus down at Auburn and I'll actually be going there myself in the Fall. We have an identical version of the vacuum chamber and the plasma source as the new apparatus (minus the scary big superconducting magnet) and we're going to work on getting it up and running and workign on a few non-magnetized dusty plasma experiments before I the Summer ends.

If we start work on it this week I'll take some snapshots (and I could take some pics of the other machines if you guys are interested)