How to open a textbook
How to open a textbook
64 comments
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One opening line that's always stuck with me is:
"The doctor said I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, he didn't actually say it, but we knew he was thinking it."
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So... is Goldstein still around or did he...?
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Don't worry, he's alive: His wiki page
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Apparently still alive at 85: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Goodstein
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There's still time
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We are all gas with a slightly denser particle distribution.
🔫
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We all are vast collections of harmonic oscillators.
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Ah yes, joke #3
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Thank you for this, it was new to me
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My favorite class in grad school. I absolutely loved deriving the laws of thermodynamics from first principles based the random motion of atoms. It was beautiful.
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I don't know. I like Griffith's Quantum Mechanics which opens saying if you think you're starting to understand this stuff, you really haven't.
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Because you're touching them with your eyes
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Weed out the riff-raff who can't hack it
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Boltzmann is "riff-raff" now?!? I get what you're going for, but c'mon.
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To quote twitch chat: "monkaS"
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I dunno, I usually open a textbook by turning over the front cover 🥁
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Why do we have a 🌫️ emoji instead of a cymbal? It would compliment the drum emoji so well.
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This is beautiful and I must study this subject now.
You know; so I have an excuse.
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Statistical mechanics is so fucking brutal \m/
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...and then we take the partial derivative of the log of this infinite sum wrt molar volume to find that--
Why?
Why what?
helplessly gestures at the whiteboard
Oh, yeah, it's so the math works out later! Anyway, for small Θ, the derivative has a nice closed form that we can Tailor expand in f-
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Yeah lol, lots of physics and math was invented by multidisciplinary geniuses who saw equations that seemed to have no answer and said "oh yeah, this looks like a problem from biology that I've seen solved with this bit of fluid mechanics, and that problem can be solved with this complex trick from differential calculus. And you know, after we do that the whole system is starting to look like a circuit that uses properties from thermodynamics..."
Then your teacher and the textbook throws it on a white board and says "some smart dude figured out this was the way to solve this problem. It looks like this and it boils down to this equation. Don't ask questions."
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There's a mechanics textbook called "there once was a classical theory" and it opens with:
There once was a classical theory Of which quantum disciples were leery. They said, “Why spend so long On a theory that’s wrong?” Well, it works for your everyday query!
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So you are just going to live forever?
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Of course, but then the book isn't for you.
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does statistical mechanics help explain how often this gets posted here? 🙃
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Thanks Thiccle Rick
64 comments
My third year thermodynamics course opened with a similar quip by the lecturer. Entropy is actually depressing. You can't fight it. You can't not fight it. It just wins.
So.. that's why I never tidy up my room. I'm just too smart!
Man, you humans are going to be really upset when you find the universal wall....
I mean uh....
Hey, how was the game last night amirite?
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
To quote The Star Child, "What, you haven't planned that far ahead?"
Life is a temporary win over it, just enjoy it while you can.
Well I mean yeah. It wasn't my first existential crisis - you get used to them eventually. Or you do what those guys did I guess.