My wife loves physics and has been trying to find good online lessons of classes. How are you going about the studying?
Discussion
First thing to do is *learn the language* physicist speak a different language and once you learn that it makes it way easier to process physics information. Things that helped were:
- learning about symmetry groups and the terms they use there (SU(2), etc). woit has a good textbook on this
- learning all the terminology and the underling linear algebra in quantum mechanics helped a lot (bra-ket, density matrices, etc). I had a lot of fun with "quantum computer science" by mermin.
Use chatgpt to relate concepts but don't overrely on this because it can give you wrong answers
In general my method of learning might be strange, I just dive wikipedia and try to learn as much as the vocabulary as possible, and explore through things i find interesting and start learning all the language there first. Then once I'm confident that i at least know what they are talking about I'll start watching video lectures and books (lenny susskind, richard feynman, etc). Physics is vast so its best to find a spot you find interesting and try to learn as much in that area as you can.
Dunno if that helped 😅
My curiosity to understand the world better takes me back to physics every time. Took a screenshot for my next google/YouTube session
ChatGPT could be a disaster sometimes, only for the reason that recently, space science has been accelerating & so many new discoveries are being made every day… it’s hard to catch up with them! Especially the breakthroughs in nuclear fusion… I mean wow! ⭐️🌟💫 Now, the great debates on the use of AI in space craft as well.
Love it!!! I'll share your approach with her and I'm sure she'll really appreciate you taking the time to provide some guidance.
I believe that mathematics is an essential aspect of learning about universe, which people often overlook while learning from podcasts & LLMs. Although learning from LLM & podcasts is better than not learning at all, people tend to repeat what they have heard without understanding the underlying fundamentals.
While large language models can answer simple questions, for more complex ones, we have to learn fundamentals to even understand those answers.
Pura vidaaa, I'm using Tarzan language 👏
coursera.org is where I take most of my classes. They’re very specified, but when I started out, I began with basic courses of the Solar System & Galaxies - that will help her! Also, if that’s too much work, she can start to read some Carl Sagan! 🫂💫
Carl Sagan was easily one of the top 5 communicators of all time.
This clip where he explains why we can believe in the 4th dimension only using paper and an apple is pure genius.
One of my first professors was a trained NASA astronaut & used pizza analogies for every. single. class. lol
Great teachers live with us forever.
The coolest analogy was explaining the aphelion, perihelion: one of my favorite words to use - “exoplanet,” the list goes on lol