HOW to BECOME a GOOD THEORETICAL PHYSICISTWord文件下载.docx

1、 perhaps in a future site. Lets first limit ourselves to the absolute minimum. The subjects listed below must be studied. Any omission will be punished: failure. Do get me right: you dont have to believe anything you read on faith - check it. Try alternative approaches, as many as you can. You will

2、discover, time and again, that really what those guys did indeed was the smartest thing possible. Amazing. the best of the texts come with exercises. Do them. find out that you can understand everything. Try to reach the stage that you discover the numerous misprints, tiny mistakes as well as more i

3、mportant errors, and imagine how you would write those texts in a smarter way. I can tell you of my own experiences. I had the extreme luck of having excellent teachers around me. That helps one from running astray. It helped me all the way to earn a Nobel Prize. But I didnt have internet. I am goin

4、g to try to be your teacher. It is a formidable task. I am asking students, colleagues, teachers to help me improve this site. It is presently set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just ordinary ones, but the very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own

5、Nobel Prize. If you are more modest than that, well, finish those lousy schools first and follow the regular routes provided by educators and specialized -gogues who are so damn carefully chewing all those tiny portions before feeding them to you. This is a site for ambitious people. I am sure that

6、anyone can do this, if one is gifted with a certain amount of intelligence, interest and determination. Theoretical Physics is like a sky scraper. It has solid foundations in elementary mathematics and notions of classical （pre-20th century） physics. Dont think that pre-20th century physics is irrel

7、evant since now we have so much more. In those days, the solid foundations were laid of the knowledge that we enjoy now. Dont try to construct your sky scraper without first reconstructing these foundations yourself. The first few floors of our skyscraper consist of advanced mathematical formalisms

8、that turn the Classical Physics theories into beauties of their own. They are needed if you want to go higher than that. So, next come many of the other subjects listed below. Finally, if you are mad enough that you want to solve those tremendously perplexing problems of reconciling gravitational ph

9、ysics with the quantum world, you end up studying general relativity, superstring theory, M-theory, Calabi-Yau compactification and so on. Thats presently the top of the sky scraper. There are other peaks such as Bose-Einstein condensation, fractional Hall effect, and more. Also good for Nobel Prize

10、s, as the past years have shown. A warning is called for: even if you are extremely smart, you are still likely to get stuck somewhere. Surf the net yourself. Find more. Tell me about what you found. If this site has been of any help to someone while preparing for a University study, if this has mot

11、ivated someone, helped someone along the way, and smoothened his or her path towards science, then I call this site successful. Please let me know. Here is the list. Note that this site NOT meant to be very pedagogical. I avoid texts with lots of colorful but distracting pictures from authors who tr

12、y hard to be funny. Also, the subjects included are somewhat focused towards my own interests. LIST OF SUBJECTS, IN LOGICAL ORDER （not everything has to be done in this order, but this approximately indicates the logical coherence of the various subjects. Some notes are at a higher level than others

13、）. Languages Primary Mathematics Classical Mechanics Optics Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics Electronics Electromagnetism Quantum Mechanics Atoms and Molecules Solid State Physics Nuclear Physics Plasma Physics Advanced Mathematics Special Relativity Advanced Quantum Mechanics Phenomenology

14、General Relativity Quantum Field Theory Superstring Theory More resources The .ps files are PostScript files . （In this initial phase this page is still incomplete!） Languages:English is a prerequisite. If you havent mastered it yet, learn it. You must be able to read, write, speak and understand En

15、glish, but you dont have to be perfect here. The lousy English used in this text is mine. Thats enough. All publications are in English. Note the importance of being able to write in English. Sooner or later you will wish to publish your results. People must be able to read and understand your stuff

16、. Free English courses and resources. BBC world service learning English. French, German, Spanish and Italian may be useful too, but they are not at all necessary. They are nowhere near the foundations of our sky-scraper, so dont worry. You do need the Greek alphabet. Greek letters are used a lot. L

17、earn their names, otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving an oral presentation. Now, here begins the serious stuff. Dont complain that it looks like being a lot. You wont get your Nobel Prize for free, and remember, all of this together takes our students at least 5 years of intense study

18、（at least one reader was surprised at this statement, saying that （s）he would never master this in 5 years; indeed, I am addressing people who plan to spend most of their time to this study）. More than rudimentary intelligence is assumed to be present, because ordinary students can master this mater

19、ial only when assisted by patient teachers. It is necessary to do exercises. Some of the texts come with exercises. Do them, or better, invent your own exercises. Try to outsmart the authors, but please refrain from mailing to me your alternative theories until you have studied the entire lot; if yo

20、u do this well you will discover that many of these authors were not so stupid after all. Return to List Now, first things first :Primary Mathematics:Are you comfortable with numbers, adding, subtracting, square roots, etc.?*Beginning Algebra* （West Texas A&M）*Intermediate Algebra* （West Texas A& Na

21、tural numbers: 1, 2, 3, . Integers: ., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, . Rational numbers （fractions）: , , , 23791 / 773, . Real numbers: Sqrt（2） = 1.4142135. , pi = 3.14159265. , e= 2.7182818., . Complex numbers: 2+3i, eia= cos（a） + isin（ a）, . they are very important!Dave E. Joyces trigonometry course This i

22、s a must:Prof. James Binneys course on complex numbers（PDF） （nearly） complete overview of primary mathematics（K.Kubota, Kentucky） See also Chris Popes lecture notes:Methods1-ch1Methods1-ch2The complex plane. Cauchy theorems and contour integration （G. Cain, Atlanta） Set theory: open sets, compact sp

23、aces. Topology.You may be surprised to learn that they do play a role indeed in physics!Algebraic equations. Approximation techniques. Series expansions: the Taylor series. Solving equations with complex numbers. Trigonometry: sin（2x）=2sin x cos x, etc. Infinitesimals. Differentiation. Differentiate

24、 basic functions （sin, cos, exp）. Integration. Integrate basic functions, when possible. Differential equations. Linear equations.The Fourier transformation. The use of complex numbers. Convergence of series. The complex plane. Cauchy theorems and contour integration （now this is fun）. The Gamma fun

25、ction （enjoy studying its properties）. Gaussian integrals. Probability theory. Partial differential equations. Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. This is for starters. Some of these topics actually come as entire lecture courses. Much of those are essential ingredients of theories in Physics. You dont have to finish it all before beginning with what follows next, but