Please don't take this too seriously.

[pchang]

Also, self esteem low today. Pretty sure I don't get this whole statistical thermodynamics thing. Hoping for a C, otherwise I'll have to retake it. Which might not be a bad thing. Not fond of the professor's style, though my lack of understanding is definitely not his fault.

The concept is not too hard. We have a way to aggregate the collective behavior of lots of small things to come up with gross measurements of large things like pressure and temperature. The methods involve statistics because they rely upon the fact that those collections of small things have normal distributions.

[Lorizael]

Well, I've taken most of a semester of it now. I understand the basic idea. I think the problem is that this class doesn't really build on the earlier physics I've taken and many of the values we're deriving don't have any physical meaning for me. For example, my intuition tells me nothing about the Gibbs free energy of some gas.

[Ben Kenobi]

Lori, don't waste time trying to use your intuition in statistics. It's all about the math. Whatever the math tells you is what you should go with.

[DaShi]

Well, I've taken most of a semester of it now. I understand the basic idea. I think the problem is that this class doesn't really build on the earlier physics I've taken and many of the values we're deriving don't have any physical meaning for me. For example, my intuition tells me nothing about the Gibbs free energy of some gas.

There was an interesting article in Wired about the physicist who consulted on Interstellar. One of the concepts they talked about was the importance of being able to intuit complex physically phenomena. You could know the math, but until you really intuit the concept, you don't really understand it.

Here it is:

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/metaphysics-of-interstellar/

NOLAN: I wanted to break the light barrier, as I called it. And Kip wasn’t having any of that. That went on for a couple of weeks.

THORNE: I gave him a document where I laid out the reasons it couldn’t work. We had a couple of conversations, and he backed down.

NOLAN: We had more than a couple of conversations. What he’s not telling you is, I finally managed to get my head around relativity. I don’t mean a full understanding of it. I mean a glimpse of a feeling, you know? Like when you’re trying to play an instrument and you happen to hit the right chord? So I said, “You know what? I agree. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.” And he goes, “Yeah, well, in localized regions it can’t,” or something. And I’m like, wait a second! Every rabbit hole has another rabbit hole at the bottom of it, and another rabbit hole.

“The thing I most wanted was that the film have real science embedded in it—a range of science, from well-established truths to speculative science.” —Kip Thorne DAN WINTERS
WIRED: He incepted you with relativity.

NOLAN: Oh, very much. I lost it pretty rapidly afterward. Jonah says that through working with Kip, he finally grasped relativity for a couple of weeks, and then the writers’ strike happened and he had to stop writing, and it was gone. I know exactly what he means. It’s like a little window opening up. That’s why the relationship between storytelling and the scientific method fascinates me. It wasn’t really about an intellectual understanding. It was a feeling of grasping something.

THORNE: You call it a feeling; I would call it an intuition. And this isn’t just for nonscientists. Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich, one of the really great astrophysicists of the 20th century and a codesigner of the Russian hydrogen bomb, was a close friend of mine. He could not grasp how Hawking radiation comes out of black holes, even though he had given Stephen Hawking the key idea that underlies the concept in a conversation the three of us had. For about two years, he could not make it fit with his intuition. Then, one time I was in Moscow and I went over to his flat. He threw up his hands and said, “I understand! I give up. Hawking was right.” He finally understood it in an intuitive way.

WIRED: Is that different than understanding the math?

THORNE: Very different. The math was there. The math was straightforward. Well, let me take that back—those are two different things. The math was there, and the steps in the math were straightforward, but interpreting the math was not so clear. And how you use the math depends very heavily on this intuition. It’s a key part of the scientist’s arsenal, as it is for the storyteller’s arsenal.

[Lorizael]

And you'll also hear cautionary tales from scientists about how intuition can lead you astray, because there are some things our tiny monkey brains simply weren't evolved to think about.

[pchang]

Try this explanation

Well, I've taken most of a semester of it now. I understand the basic idea. I think the problem is that this class doesn't really build on the earlier physics I've taken and many of the values we're deriving don't have any physical meaning for me. For example, my intuition tells me nothing about the Gibbs free energy of some gas.

http://www.ehow.com/info_7926649_gibbs-energy.html

Perhaps that will help you think about Gibbs free energy. Remember that all the molecules have some energy and that this energy distribution is a normal distribution.

[Lorizael]

Well, that was just an example, but thank you. I'm gonna have to go back to the textbook and reread some of the stuff I'm having trouble with.

[DaShi]

And you'll also hear cautionary tales from scientists about how intuition can lead you astray, because there are some things our tiny monkey brains simply weren't evolved to think about.

Maybe theirs weren't

[DaShi]

Lori, everything in the universe follows one deceptively simple rule. Once you figure that out you're set.

[Lorizael]

Oh, I figured that out 11.5 years ago. The trick is figuring out how to apply simple rules to complex situations.

[pchang]

I have found great success with both Particle in Cell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle-in-cell and Monte Carlo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method simulations.

[ricketyclik]

Lori, everything in the universe follows one deceptively simple rule. Once you figure that out you're set.

Do tell

[Lorizael]

In my continuing effort to bang TA, I have thoroughly cleaned my room for the first time in probably a year. Got rid of a bunch of boxes, put away a bunch of papers, swept up a bunch of dust, etc. Kind of nice to have a clean room. Don't feel entirely like a grotesque, filth-ridden slob.

[rah]

Sounds to me like a big step. Well done.

[self biased]

In my continuing effort to bang TA, I have thoroughly cleaned my room for the first time in probably a year. Got rid of a bunch of boxes, put away a bunch of papers, swept up a bunch of dust, etc. Kind of nice to have a clean room. Don't feel entirely like a grotesque, filth-ridden slob.

Keeping my living space tidy is something I really struggle with. It takes a lot of effort for me to come home from work and not rot on the computer.