You STEM people. Here you go. I studied civil engineering for a while and I really thought it was interesting. I love trigonometry. I thought trigonometry was awesome. I never tried calculus yet but science is very interesting. Thermodynamics is pretty cool as well.
I can’t wait to try thermodynamics; meant to be hella complicated
Edit: a news website on Physics and Space;
You do know what “IFL” stands for, right?
Trigonometry starts with:
sin^2(x) + cos^2(x) = 1.
tan(x) = sin(x) / cos(x)
They first use a right rectangle to introduce sin, cos and tan functions, or sometimes directly the so-called trigonometric circle.
Advanced thermodynamics can get pretty messy. At school we just scratched the surface with a few molecular gas considerations, the ideal gas model (which assumes no forces between distinct molecules), then transformations: dilation, compression, heating and cooling. The Carnot, Otto or Diesel cycles are fun too.
Yeah, (I f’in love science), one of my physics teacher’s introduced the website to me in 2014. I thought it was funny hehe
I can’t wait to get into the nitty gritty of thermodynamics - I love physical chemistry - something about it, the imagery especially; gets me super curious and excitable!
Call me Gas
Andrey; if I remember right. You’re from mainland Europe aren’t you? It’s interesting your syllabus (I assume at school) was similar to mine from what you listed about thermodynamics
Edit. Was school, you said it too, my mistake
Yes, mainland Europe, attended a math/science - oriented high school.
Physics syllabus breakdown:
9th grade: newtonian mechanics
10th grade: thermodynamics, electrostatics, direct current circuits
11th grade: oscillations and waves, optics
12th grade: special relativity, basic atomic physics notions
What about you?
Damn, now it makes sense why European schools allow transfers between when using the European Credit System. They really did collaborate on science syllabus
Man I really wanted to go to Barcelona school of economics in my undergrad, now in my second undergrad I’d love to study in Europe somewhere - would be so cool to really understand and mix with the culture of the mainland
I always wanted to backpack Europe
My A- level (16 - 18) syllabus was pretty much the same! The only difference was we did it in two years
They focused on theoretical problem sets for much of each semester, went from no-brainer questions ie "if F = m Ă— a, given m and a, then compute F" to real hard mind-benders.
On the other hand the school was underfunded, thus missing important lab equipment
I see. I went to what used to be considered a technical science school too. It was called the Nobel, permission given by the Nobel Institute itself - but the teaching was a bit poor for science. The students did decent but the teaching was all over the place, one or two teachers were really good but the physics department was very very poor in teaching whilst I was there
On the other hand, the maths department was generally really good. They’d always partake in the Olympiad (I only did once, in year/grade 9) @Andrey
I didn’t know about Newtonian. Mechanics till I was 17, and it was only because of the maths department
My science teacher knew his stuff, at least classroom level, unless a cheeky student came up with a tricky question.
12th grade right before graduation someone asked him whether Fermat’s shortest time principle in optics, and Lagrange’s least action principle in analytical mechanics are two faces of the same coin. He caved in. The same guy asked our maths teacher about elliptical integrals and got a similar reaction.
That guy was me. It was payback for some bad grades in the years prior.
Loool I don’t even know what those are haha
Least action principle I’ve come across in physics before (but I don’t really know what it is)
By then the internet was widely available and I looked up stuff in order to puzzle my teachers.
Truth is, I was fond of all my high school teachers and classmates, I secretly cried when it was over.
Damn, that sounds like it was a very good few years. I love it. Formative years are meant to be this way, the kind you cry about.
I was glad to leave, it was bittersweet, by 18 I had symptoms of schizophrenia and just couldn’t enjoy school at all anymore so I was glad to be out of the pressure box - which is was it felt like.
What made you pick computer science? I remember you saying that was your undergraduate i think (if you don’t mind my asking)
I got a checking account with a bank back in 2002 and since my simple math skills have greatly improved. I have not bounced a check yet!
Sorry to hear about your illness, for a second I’d forgotten this is the sz forum. My first sz episode happened at 30 going on 31, so much later.
Honestly, my parents convinced me to focus on computers, I was hesitant at first, then agreed to give it a try. I barely made it out alive, though.
Even now, as a senior programmer I still feel like a fraud. I am not talented and definitely not passionate about writing code and keeping up with rapid changes in the field…
lol
I see, I’m not going to lie, you do seem like a maths type, you remember the knowledge well for someone who hasn’t studied it for awhile.
A senior programmer is no easy feat though, regardless of how capable you feel. The position is testament to competence, nice stuff.
I’m not much of a programmer myself, I have to learn it for my course but I really cannot get myself into it, and similar things scare me, writing code and keeping up with “what’s most optimal language to learn” lol
Programming is really a young persons’ game i think, good memory, fast ability to pick up and things of this nature. Maths is a lot more laid back
The other day I was reading about an old Asian woman who taught herself programming and even published a game on iPhone, wow. So maybe there’s hope regardless of age?
The plethora (love that word) of available languages can feel daunting, yes. I stick to one or two.
If you love science, as I suspect, you could try dabbling in a high-level simulation environment like MATLAB.