The Thidé Book of EMT

An entire book on electromagnetic theory, free to download! That was my reaction when I found exactly that. It comes from a physicist who works at Uppsala University. A physicist named Bo Thidé, and the book, of course, is called "Electromagnetic Field Theory".

Electromagnetic Field Theory by Bo Thidé

I found this book out of necessity - I needed to look-up some EMT. It's the course book for a Classical Electrodynamics course at Uppsala University, so at least it has that reliability. It has also been recommended by Gerard t'Hooft, on the page that landed here.  To say a piece about the content, it's nice and concise, with a large mathematical formula section at the end. It's level is late-undergraduate and postgraduate - so Bones and Jaw. There's also an exercise book that can be found on the same website. It used to be available on Amazon, but it came with a cover designed by Albert Hofmann (well it looks like it was).

A garish existence on Amazon.

Before I found this book I didn't know about the Swedish city, Uppsala. Turns out it's the fourth largest city in Sweden, has some pretty impressive buildings and is home to the oldest Swedish university... yep, Uppsala University. This particular university once had it's doorways darkened by Anders Celsius, inventor of the Celsius scale. It's clear that Uppsala is a great city for it's own reasons, but for me, Bo Thidé has put Uppsala on the map.

I like this book!
Tack, Bo Thidé.

Links:

Download page for Electromagnetic Field Theory by Bo Thidé:
http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/index.html#download

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The Pasture of C++ Notes

A while ago I needed to learn a programming language. But which one? There's a lot to choose from. Baffled and confused, I took a piece of advice from a computer scientist friend: "C++, because once you learn that, all other languages will follow". Nice and simple, now to learn it.

A lot of graduate students will start their studies without knowing a great deal of programming languages. This means that when they start, they need to learn it. So most places put on computing lectures for these students as soon as they start and, most of the time, they put it on the internet.

The following resource is, as it says, from the DESY Summer School. The notes you can get are a pdf of the slides/handouts that were used in the lectures. As always, lecture notes are quick to the point and they won't go unnecessarily out of the way. For example, the language FORTRAN is described as VW Beetle, whereas C++ is described as a Formula 1. Nice and snappy, but I think a more amusing comparison would be a plain to one of those ribbed things... Regardless, here it is:

https://www.desy.de/~blist/summerstudents/c++-intro-10-offhandout.pdf

A drawback of the notes is that they may not go into enough detail. That's why you can use another resource along side it. The cplusplus website has a really good tutorial that you can also download as a pdf:

http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

To actually do the code you need a compiler. So I followed more advise from the computer scientist friend: "use Linux because it just works" - Ubuntu and g++! If you aren't a fan of the above two resources, try these out too: C++ Intro and C++ Reference.

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The Perimeter Institute Video Inclusion

The Perimeter Institute is the Black Pearl on the theoretical physics ocean. Among its’ crew are some of the leading researchers in particle physics, string theory, cosmology, condensed matter and quantum physics. So, when the Perimeter Institute do lectures or seminars, you expect them to be pretty good ones. Amazingly, you can make this decision for yourself as you can access every single recorded lecture and seminar from their website for free. And they record everything!

The PIRSA website is where the action happens. PIRSA stands for “Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive” - which is rather self explanatory. On this website, you can browse through the entire archive of videos. Some of these videos are public outreach, some are colloquium, but the majority are from their masters courses in theoretical physics. So it's applicable to all levels. Splice the mainbrace! (Apparently that mean to give the crew a drink.)

The masters course is really intense, but you’re able to just stroll through the lectures in your own leisurely time. There are 4 parts to the course:

1. "Mathematical Review" - reviewing mathematics such as group theory and complex analysis. A man who goes by the name of Tibra Ali does the complex analysis course and he does a really good job of it.

1. "Core" - essential physics that’s needed for understanding heavier topics, such as string theory.

1. "Review" - this is pretty much a review of the areas of research at Perimeter. This is where you get to see courses on string theory and cosmology and all the others.

1. "Explorations" - again, this is to do with the areas of research at Perimeter, but the focus is now on current research.

Here’s the lecture list from the 2011/2012 academic year. Although they go on every year, I found the 11/12 ones the best - the most recently completed.

The non-course videos are also really good. One of my favourites is by Cliff Burgess, a particle physics researcher who, on his homepage, describes himself as "one helluva guy", and he is! In this VT, he essentially “gases” about why particle physics is the best research area.

The main piece of advice from the above VT is to, when it comes to physics, "follow your nose". Sniff. Sniff.

PIRSA website:

http://pirsa.org/

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Impressing with Physics (Misconceptions about the Higgs)

The Higgs boson has been cycled through the media a lot recently. And, as is common with the media, a dark cloud follows has been following it around. Physics Professor, Mike Kruse, has explained some of the major parts of the dark cloud, in a little article from Duke University: "Top 5 common misconceptions about the Higgs particle"

The first misconception is, at first sight, just being a little bit pedantic about the wording:

Misconception: The Higgs particle gives other particles mass.
Correction: The masses of fundamental particles come from interactions with the Higgs field.

But this is a lesson to all of our Scholars, as it is so tempting to leave actual physics aside, in favour of a more colourful and dramatic explanation.

Theother misconceptions are a mixture of technicalities:

Misconception: The Higgs field generates the mass of everything.
Correction: The Higgs field generates the mass of about one percent of observable matter and possibly all of dark matter.


Bizarrities:

Misconception: There was a "eureka moment" for discovering the Higgs boson and the existence of the Higgs field.
Correction: There will never be eureka moments for discoveries such as the Higgs boson and the Higgs field at the Large Hadron Collider.


And good, simple, misconceptions:


 Misconception: The Higgs field is what scientists used to call the aether.
 Correction: The Higgs field isn't a medium; it's a field of energy.


Misconception: The Higgs boson creates the Higgs field.
 Correction: The Higgs field generates the Higgs boson.



So, if you are using physics to impress someone, either tell 'em it straight, or remember the truth afterwards. We all use physics to impress people, from time to time.



The full article about misconceptions:
http://today.duke.edu/2012/11/higgsmisconceptions

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