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  1. rama_v

    Quanta to quarks question & the overall HSC

    OUCH. Sorry, no way I can read or make sense of that - please reformat it!
  2. rama_v

    Tables in Science Exams?

    helper is a physics teacher. Listen to him. Don't need essays - its physics for goodness sake. Dot-points will suffice so long as the content is there.
  3. rama_v

    Tables in Science Exams?

    Scientists are really lazy when it comes to writing. That's because we prefer to do more science :-) ...
  4. rama_v

    Need help with a simple physics question (electricity)

    Power = dW/dt (where W is work), in general. In this case: P= d/dt(IVt) = IV = (V/R)*V=V2/R Power is measured in Watts, which is the same as Joules/s.
  5. rama_v

    Science forums very quiet this year...

    That's it. I found the first half OK, but got lost completely by week 10. I'm probably no longer that good at maths, but I like to blame the fact that I was doing 30UOC, and never did the pre-reqs (I had no clue about Fourier representations, for example). On a different note, if any of you...
  6. rama_v

    Science forums very quiet this year...

    How many people here have taken MATH2130? Did anyone find it as impossibly hard as I did, or was it just because I didn't even do the pre-reqs that I found it insanely difficult?
  7. rama_v

    Science career paths?

    Being an academic isn't so bad - you get average pay, pretty good hours, not much stress, and you get to do cool research and publish papers in journals. Oh, and you get to travel heaps :-)
  8. rama_v

    Anyone doing MATH1131 who did only 2U Math in High School?

    I did extension 1 at school and found MATH1131 and MATH1231 easy pickings for the most part (there were a couple of hard sections in calculus, but a little bit of time spent understanding them made a world of difference, and algebra was very simple after a while). If you do the homework...
  9. rama_v

    Integrate e^-(x^2)

    Wow, this thread is still active four years after I started it. Such a silly question I asked then. I wish they taught Taylor series (and many other things) in high school maths, it would have been really useful, and would have simplified limit proofs unbelievably. E.g. Behaviour of Sin (x)/x...
  10. rama_v

    Black body radiation

    If you want to go more deeply into it, you have to look at modes of vibration within the cavity. Think of these like the standing waves on a string. The higher frequencies have more possible modes, so classically one predicted that the shorter the wavelength, the greater the number of modes, and...
  11. rama_v

    Phonon - seriously confused

    This is the problem with reducing BCS theory to a bunch of words. The phonon-mediated attraction depends on coupling of vibrational modes within the crystal (i.e., the phonons) with the electron (which have a wavevector, usually denoted by the letter k). The theory is mathematical, complicated...
  12. rama_v

    Tutor in Blacktown

    Sure - please msg me.
  13. rama_v

    What is a crystal lattice?

    The lattice is the grid.
  14. rama_v

    Reflection and Diffraction

    No, it's not in the sylabus. But if it helps you understand why things occur then you should learn it :)
  15. rama_v

    Reflection and Diffraction

    Firstly, diffraction: To think of it you might like to look at the Huygen's-Fresnel construction. Basically, consider a spherical wave propagating radially outwards. Each spot on the wave front acts as a source of secondary waves. From this construction it is easy to see how diffraction occurs...
  16. rama_v

    What does polarization mean?

    Keep in mind there also exists circularly polarised electromagnetic waves, where the tip of the electric field vector draws out a circle over time. Of course it could rotate right, or left, over time, so you can get both right and left-polarised waves. Circular polarization - Wikipedia, the...
  17. rama_v

    assessment

    Watch mythbusters
  18. rama_v

    John Grisham

    I've read three so far. They are very good books. They tend to really stretch what is actually plausible in the real world, but are real page turners nonetheless.
  19. rama_v

    What are you currently Reading?

    I listened to the audiobook of that last year - very interesting biography (it's nothing political)...
  20. rama_v

    modelling conductors, semiconductors and insulators

    If you were doing it properly, you would use the Drude model for conductivity in metals. Then, you would use the nearly-free electron model (probably simpler than other models IMO) for semiconductors. That would give you an overview of band theory and concepts such as effective mass, drift...
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