My undergrad quantum mechanics class had 12 people. My professor described the first mid term with my favorite quote tothis day. "If it's solvable it's trivial".
Me: *Physics student taking Differential Equations class* Professor: “Now there is a whole chapter here on solving differential equations by variation of boundaries, but the only people who EVER use this are physicists, so we’re skipping the whole chapter.” Me: ................................ great. 😩
Yeah, in one of my first few classes of thermo and stat mech, my professors was giving background on founders, and was like, "yeah...you'll find that they all seem to kill themselves...*awkward laugh* but I wouldn't worry too much about it". I should've. Stat mech definitely killed me. One of the hardest classes.
@@abhabh6896 It is, but it kinda makes history completely unamusing. Just the other day my friend texted me something like "Dude! Did you know that medieval french court tried and executed a pig for murder? That's crazy!". To which I could only reply "Yeah, what about it? I've seen this court record in full, it makes total sense, if you think about the concept of justice at the time".
@@miobiuscrimson2828 There will always be something you do not know about and well you always have the future to be amused by and the present aswell. I for one find medieval history really interesting but you always have my field , the dark abyss of theoretical physics.
For me it was Modern physics just because our professor was from Harvard and he had the highest expectation. we started with 20 students and by finals, there were only 5 students left and only 3 passed.
No offense but your professor sucks. He's a professor so he should've atleast tried to help everyone. What's the point of being a professor if you can't even teach the majority of your students.
I also found statistical mechanics and thermodynamics challenging, but only for the first time when I learned it (Level 3XXX). It became easier when I learned it at the second time (Level 4XXX). There is actually a famous quotation by Arnold Sommerfeld mentioned by my professor at Level 3XXX:"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, so it doesn't bother you any more." And that's true, at least for the first and second times.
Yeah, It's weird to go into a class where the expectation is that you'll get practice solving some problems, but you won't really understand what you are doing by the end of the semester. I took several classes like that, and it drove me nuts desperately trying to understand the material. For thermodyamics, the textbook and instructor weren't much help either.
Honestly, Solid State Physics killed me. Though, that semester, I got the flu twice, and missed 4 of the 16 weeks, so that whole semester was terrible. I agree that Classical Mechanics was hard. It's like, everything you did before was just a nice sample, then you dug deep into the core of what you were approximating. It's like when you have to take Assembler programming in a Computer Science degree. You thought you knew what was going on, and you thought you knew how to code, but then realized that someone did all the heavy lifting for you.
One of the hardest class I had was Advanced Quantum Mechanics. The contents of the class was very interesting and I managed to understand the math and concepts behind it. What made it hard was that the tests and exam covered things completely different from what was discussed in class and assignments.
Quantum mechanics in my undergrad literally felt as hard as a major life tragedy. I tried hard to gain a deep intuition of QM the entire semester and it still feels blotchy.
I love your videos. I'm graduating with a physics BS this semester too. Best feeling is when you don't really know what you're doing in a 4000 level course but by now you've got that sweet sweet skill to guess a method to solve any problem.
Intro to astrophysics was a crazy hard class. There was no lecture and the exercises went through so many topics (celestial mechanics, schwarzschild spacetime, quantum ideal gases, nuclear fusion, expansion of the universe, CMB) at record speed. I'm not a physics student, and I also didn't take nearly enough math classes for this.
I really identified with your experience when you said you wished you’d developed your mathematical rigor beforehand. I came into university as a physics major but switched over to majoring in pure math and minoring in physics. Upon taking upper level and more rigorous math courses, I realized that a lot of what I struggled with early on, could be attributed to not knowing the math yet.
I really think that thermo/stat mech is something that you have to see multiple times to be able to appreciate. I’ve probably covered thermo in depth in 4-5 courses in my undergrad and stat mech in 2 classes (one more in grad school yay!)
I’m majoring and physics as well and this is my first year of undergrad and I’m having a hard time with classical mechanics as well and damn I love you for making me feel like everyone else struggles with it too 😭🤝
I remember back in the good ol’ days... our Q.M. Class took 4 hours a night for homework. It started out with about 45 students and ended with the four of us. (Someone asked if my first edition Shankar was my Bible since I was always carrying it and studying from it.) My E&M class wasn’t “easy”, but the material really “clicked” for me (Reitz, Christie & Milford-did anyone else notice how many problems were converted from Gaussian units?) Yndrian’s “Quantum Chromodynamics had just been published and the prof’s didn’t understand the Standard Model any better than we did. The former QM prof had finally developed some respect for us “fantastic four”. Sadly one lady had to leave school because of visa problems. The highlight of the year was a symposium road trip where we met Dr. Carl Sagan. Thanks for your video and the revival of memories of the good ol’ days.
Honestly, I found university physics far more difficult than anything that followed (except maybe advanced E&M - we used Jackson for half the course but that was more than enough to break my spirit). I had a very bad habit of trying to really understand the material and re-deriving everything on my own - unfortunately, this was a very time-consuming process and it often was not what I was tested on. Though I must admit, that mentality served me well when I moved into upper-division courses.
I have the same habit....Like I was reading a book about economic and I stop reading (for now) when the book talk about game theory because I dot nothing about game theory.....the same with classic mechanic, I stop studying to learn variational calculus
Stellar Astronomy, Quantum, and Cosmology. I haven't taken Thermo/Stat Mec yet but I've had to study special topics of both in 3 of my astronomy classes so, hopefully I'll have an upper hand. We'll see...
I agree. Thermal/Stat-Mech was really demanding. I took it from Dan Schroeder (the guy who wrote the book), it was super interesting and deep but REALLY hard to wrap your head around at times.
Jilal Jahangir it’s a great book to have near as a quick reference, but not a good book to learn from whatsoever. It skips many steps in derivations (most of which are completely non trivial), and usually does not explain why the author is doing things the way he’s doing it. But unfortunately it’s still the most complete book out there. Zangwill comes close (and even has some topics Jackson doesn’t cover at all), but it’s not there yet (maybe next edition?).
Geometry of general relitivity was pretty tough. (Though it was taught as a mathematics course) The prerequisite courses are differential geometry, algebra & differential equations. Recomended to be taken with differentiable manifolds.
Sounds more like a first year graduate level class to me. It's pretty rare to find a mathematical treatment of general relativity in undergraduate physics programs. Then again, you said it was a mathematics course, so I can definitely see it.
Statistical Mechanics was definitely one of the hardest. I also took Atomic Physics, as an elective, and yeah it was hard. Mad props to you for taking it at the same time you took QM, that's some serious flexing right there. I was doubling in Physics and Chemistry, so I got to take 2 semesters of PChem, which is a lot like Statisical Physics (but with labs).
I've just started this year and I kinda expected this list ahaha The first impact was tough indeed but at the same time, let me say your videos make me want to keep going and try- so thanks! Also, ps: your hair is the best
I'm currently undergraduate student in third semester and the courses I hated the most until now were experimental physics: classical mechanics, electrodynamics and optics. It's mostly because in the lecture you only get told some special cases and the formulas you are supposed to use in these cases but don't learn why the things are how they are. It's always like: "It's like that, deal with it!" The worst of theses was optics because there were just too many different conventions used for everything. A really annoying example would be Bragg-scattering which sometimes used half the scattering-angle for the Bragg-angle, sometimes the scattering-angle was just the Bragg-angle and once it was pi plus the scattering-angle, and everytime it was totally unclear which convention was used. The exercises were so arbitrary that the only real way to get good marks was knowing the results beforehand and then reverse-engineer what you need to do. Still I was made to think that as an experimental phycisist you need to know the answer before you tackle the problem and then try to make sense of it, which is just not really my beer.
I definitely struggled with QM II in which we covered chapter 5 to the end of Griffith's. The homeworks were super challenging and so were the exams. I also struggeld with EM while it seems a lot of people didn't. Classical mechanics tends to be a very difficult class even for people who started off as physics majors since it's the first "real" physics class that you take.
Classical mechanics 1&2 were my favorite classes in undergrad. I loved learning the math and principles behind complex problems I could see in the real world. Hardest was taking thermo and solid state at the same time
Taking classical mechanics right now and I could not agree with your description more. I thought I was so good at classical physics because I knew all the equations and when to use them. Once I got to this class I realized you actually need to derive what you're doing and if you mess up in one place everything beyond it is wrong. Just going to have to forget everything I know and start from the ground up🤷🏼♂️
Classical Mechanics was the hardest lol You had to learn how to think in physics! Love your vids! I’m an EE major with Photonics Area Pathway and hope to go into a Physics PHD!
I guess, thinking about it, my three were all third year: Atomic and solid state physics, astrophysics, and optical physics. I found them particularly challenging because neither my study methods nor mathematics hadn't developed well enough (also missed half a sem due to unfortunate circumstances). I wrote out a 3 page latex doc trying to understand first order perturbation for atomic physics. Took it to my lecturer, and he said, "yeah, all you need is this last bit."
Lol, procrastinating on my atomic physics take home final by watching video about why atomic physics is hard. Sigh... Excuse me while I go calculate some rubidium. So much goddamn rubidium.
I actually liked thermodynamics, it was my favorite. The statistical mechanics portion was then attributed when I took biophysics and basically combined both and applied them to biological macromolecules
Statistical Mechanics was hard. Our professor was able to get to quantum statistical mechanics. The problem was that I didn't take the thermo class, so I didn't understand the system. Partition functions were fun thought. I am a math and physics major. If you don't mind me asking, what math courses did you take?
Hi, I took the traditional calc 1 - multivariable/ vector calc. I also took a course in linear algebra, differential equations, real analysis, and partial differential equations.
Andrew Dotson Did you take both semesters of real analysis? Since you took at least the first section in real analysis. I took quantum mechanics too, one thing that I didn't understand was Hilbert space. But just recently I was about to figure out why they use it. One of the main problems in QM going from finite to infinite, because sumations don't always converge. In real analysis, you find out that the reals are complete, i. e. Every Cauchy sequence converges, while the set of complex numbers are not. Notice that Hilbert space is a subspace of complex space. Also, Hilbert space is complete. I just thought it was cool.
Yeah the whole thing that makes hilbert spaces useful in QM is that the functions that live inside it are square integrable, which makes it possible to normalize them. What's really cool is when you learn how to "mix" hilbert spaces with a tensor product, and then use the completeness of the basis vectors to create a new, almost hybrid, eigenstate. And no, I didn't take the second semester of Real Analysis. I plan on taking it at some point, though.
Hey Andrew. Absolutely great video and work. Thanks for taking your time and uploading for us. I am kinda curious. Where did you do you undergrad and what are you doing now (sorry, I am new to your channel :( )? And also, what book did you guys use for your atomic physics class. I have completed by undergrad in electrical engineering but thinking of pursuing physics in grad school. TIA
For me it was Computer Organization. Basically how the hardware organizes data flow. Even tho im studying cs I find physics extremely interesting although I don’t want to study it myself. Subscribed.
Started as a biology major too and currently having classical mechanics. I really, really love this course (I didn’t fully understand the calculus of variations part but still). I think a good teacher is mandatory in that kind of course (without a good teacher I can defo tell it would’ve been a nightmare). Here in Quebec, we do physics 1 and 2 as well as cal 1 and 2 in college before we even go to university (we start uni with classical), and physics 2 was my worst class. I have ptsd from it to the point that I’m extremely scared about electromagnetism next semester.
i personally am having a fair bit of trouble digesting thermodynamics, i find some concepts very confusing and to me it almost seems contradictory at some points due to my misunderstanding.
I took Classical Mechanics straight out of Uni. Physics II, and hadn’t had differential equations yet. The professor was hilariously vague and unhelpful, but it made the homework assignments genuinely rewarding to complete (when we actually managed to complete them). Its made Engineering Dynamics a cakewalk though!
my current top 3 are: 1. plasma physics (deriving all the wavefunctions for differect scenarios, and using the momentum, continuity and heat equation. And on top of that; Landau damping) 2. Classical mechanics (should imo be taken later on after the fundamental maths courses) 3. Quantum mechanics (many new concepts, didnt have proper training in differential equations beforehand and SPIN :-P )
Classical Mechanics *is* a fundamental maths course! Well, that’s part-joke: calculus and differential equations are of great help in dealing with it. But (the way the taught me) a whole bunch of maths was derived at the course itself, because it is not generally taught in maths courses.
I find it interesting that you have Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics on your list. At the university I attended in Denmark, the exam for the physics majors with the highest failure rate was actually thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
Thermodynamics was challenging, but mainly because we had a massive programming project worth a third of the final grade, and I was just learning basic programming in another class. Having the flu a week before the final didn't help either.
I am studying a level mechanics recently and i found it hard too. but another branch of mathematics course which is pure maths i's much easier though I cann't think of a reason why. Were you good at meths when you were in high school? Did you do any mechanics-like study back to that time?
Correct on classical. That was one of the hardest classes I ever took, everyone thought it was hard, even people good at it. That was literally the moment I saw how smart physicist professors could be. My professor didn't use any notes at all and could answer absolutely any question at all in the book without thinking, or cracking the book. In some of the classes, he would just ask us what we wanted to know. It literally made you(your convention :)) feel stupid. But looking back It wasn't really hard because a lot of things you could visualize, whereas other classes took a lot more effort to visualize problems. However, the main thing I learned was the amount of rigor needed to do other classes.
I'm taking TFS (pretty much thermodynamics for engineering) next year. It's a 12 credit, year long course at my school. Kinda nervous about it but I'm hoping I'll do okay.
your videos terrify me. i'm finishing up my sophmore year this semester and i start modern physics 1, calculus based astronomy/astrophysics and calc 3 this fall. I have literally no idea what you're talking about (well except the thermodynamics). what have i gotten myself into? why couldn't i have just decided to do something easy like marine biology like i was originally wanting to do?
I know that feeling. Looking at a problem not knowing what it really us but getting done and right anyway. Its a hint of being a master feels like. I had this happen to me econometrics, and international economics
One thing that you talked about that I couldn’t agree more with is the lack of mathematical knowledge. Nothing frustrates me more than a physics course where I am introduced to a math concept that I have never used and expected to pick up on it immediately. Sure, I can memorize solutions but it feels so dirty to use something I don’t have a clue about. I’m trying to plan my math courses in a way that will hopefully prepare me for upcoming physics courses.
Atomic physics and solid state physics sound brutal (but really interesting). God bless I'm an engineering major and only need to take the modern physics course that briefly mentions that
The math is a bug problem for me, especially when the profs are so up and down. I had my worst prof on advanced calc but my best one in complex variables for example. The only one left is PDEs for me now so I'm hoping I can do better in the physics side. I have thermal and quantum next year plus class mech 2 and statistical as a choice in the final year. I also have electricity and magnetism. Here's hoping I can get into the groove of things as things are so fast paced in my university, you can't catch a breath. I also might have research next fall as well since I couldn't find it in the summer. Wish me luck
I had the same experience with classical thermodynamics vs Stat.Mech, only slightly more so and for slightly different reasons. I barely struggled through classical thermo, but once we got into partition functions and canonical ensembles everything clicked for me and thermodynamics became very easy. I took a high level course in Fluid Mech, and that got pretty gnarly. I never took the lab courses because I'm a theoretical physicist (and actually now I'm a mathematical biologist, moving in the opposite direction to you), but I heard some horror stories from my classmates. GR and String theory were surprisingly easy, but I had the advantage of having taken the math in advance.
I struggled with statistical thermodynamics. Our school also has this intro to particle physics and though I didn’t get a bad grade because we were doing really introductory stuff I couldn’t understand what I was doing at all so yay
I also took a course on series (summation on different series, power series, fourier series, fourier and laplace transform). Really useful on certain physics problems we face on applied physics.
I got an A in Electric Circuits 2 because most of the problems were about modelling mechanical systems into a form of transient RLC circuits in s domain and then solved using Laplace transform. I was good at using Laplace transform then. But I was actually weak at electricity concepts. And I could pass Automatic Control courses, thanks to Laplace transform. :)
The hardest undergraduate course for me was definitely General Relativity without having taken E&M yet. I took it alongside Quantum Mechanics, and QM made so much more sense in comparison.
I think I'm in the same situation as you when it comes to atomic physics. At my university, this is called "advanced quantum", it's a fourth year course covering some of the concepts you mentioned like perturbation theory, and I haven't taken intro to quantum yet but I got permission to take advanced quantum as it is only offered every other year. If you were able to do this then I hope I will too. I'm also taking modern optics next term as a fourth year elective, however I'm only in my third year. I'm taking classical mechanics (w/ general relativity) this term, I heard it was super cool but not the easiest haha, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. At my uni, stat mech and thermo are two separate courses, I just did stat mech last term, it was sort of boring in my opinion, although it got kind of cool by the end when we started talking about bosons / fermion statistics, thermo seems like it's very different than any other types of physics. I'm really into math heavy stuff and theoretical physics, so I'm looking forward to this semester. Any idea on what you'll be doing after you graduate? Keep up the great videos dude! Cheers
Michael Edwards that’s awesome that your classical mechanics does general relativity. We only did special relativity in my electrodynamics. And in my opinion thermo-statmech should be two course. Mine seemed a little rushed with it just being one. As for after I graduate, I’m actually in the process of applying to PhD programs for theoretical physics. Good luck with your studies!
I liked thermo! I loved all the partial derivatives and holding certain values constant to find the others. the course that hurt me was Electronics. Basically a course in micro electronics I scrapped by with a c
The hardest one I had was Mathematical Physics, it was essentially a lecture on the math of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory where we did complex analysis, functional analysis, distribution theory and random walks
We have a 3rd semester course called theoretical mechanics. We were first introduced to lagrangians, hamiltonians here. Also perturbation theory, both time dependent and time independent. It was pretty challangeing to learn all that maths and physics in the same course.
The biggest issue with a lot of the units I struggled with was that we didn't have just a classical mechanics unit, or just a quantum mechanics unit. Instead they were mixed with other, equally difficult topics, so when it came exam time you needed to be on top of your game for multiple different fields for a single unit. A couple examples of these units are Physics 2A, which was Quantum mechanics (covered the stuff you'd expect, solving and normalising wave functions of single particle systems in various different potentials) and EM waves (EM was went up to pretty complicated electrodynamics, didn't just stick with electro and magnetostatics). Another really tough one for me was called Physics 2B which had solid state physics, special relativity and intro to general relativity and classical mechanics all in the one unit. Each topic on it's own was not too bad, but having to know all of them really well for the exam was tough. The hardest unit I did though was simply called modern optics. I did this in my first semester second year, and it was the first time the unit was running. After the semester was over the university changed it to an honours level unit without changing almost any of the content. For reference, there were 16 people that enrolled in the unit, by the time the exam rolled around, only 8 people showed up, and of that only 3 of us passed. It covered everything from diffraction and interference to holography, non-linear optics and advanced imaging theory (Nano- and Bio-Photonics). On top of all of this we also had to do 6 labs, and write reports for each of them (compared to the usual 3-4 in other units) and do a 3,000 word review paper on a modern optics technique, including at least 20 citations from peer reviewed papers. It was brutal. I scraped through that with a 55% from memory.
The hardest was weather and the environment, because you were expected to memorise way too much stuff. 2nd hardest was the 2nd year Maths class actually taught by someone from the maths department, which contained Laplace transforms. Luckily, when I did an engineering masters a couple of years later they taught us how we could use Laplace Transforms (or s transforms) to solve problems with tables of transforms and without having to worry about any of that pesky derivation, proof or understanding. Lab was pretty tough too.
My highschool physics 11 course, because I too did not have the prerequisites, so I didn't even know slope or equation of a line, and applying any radical more complicated than a whole number root was a new concept for me
Give a caveman a book and he'll be warm for an hour. Teach him how to read it, and he will never understand thermodynamics
you mean teach him how to read it but he gets frustrated when he doesn't understand shit and burns it anyway
Aleksy Limb lol
Oh common... It's not that bad :D
LOL!
Nicely played Tieman. Nicely played.
I finally understood High School Chemistry after a year of QM.
😭
high school chmistry teacher be like "task failed successfully"
@@michaelcho6484 Chemistry is really boring
Lol fr
@@of8155
Sounds like your just in the wrong place.
My undergrad quantum mechanics class had 12 people. My professor described the first mid term with my favorite quote tothis day. "If it's solvable it's trivial".
I'm going to remember that one. It's pure gold.
I study in Paris and all chemistry and physics students are forced to take that class and about 20 to 30% pass, it was a freaking bloodbath.
Maybe he means solving analytically? Equations that can only be solved numerically are not trivial for sure.
such hubris. I guess it is trivial once it is solved tho
That sounds like a idea from Surely you’re joking mr Feynman!
Me: *Physics student taking Differential Equations class*
Professor: “Now there is a whole chapter here on solving differential equations by variation of boundaries, but the only people who EVER use this are physicists, so we’re skipping the whole chapter.”
Me: ................................ great. 😩
i am so glad my diffeq prof actually appreciates the applications in physics and takes the time to explain it.
oh that hurts
lol so true. I just decided we are supposed to do the rest of the chapters outside of class.
No physics majors ever actually went to Diff EQ lectures so the math department never liked us
As an engineer who just got an A- in diff eq, I fear what could have happened
4:12 "One of the founders, Boltzman, spent his whole life studying statistical mechanics and thermodynamics - and then he killed himself..."
Yeah, in one of my first few classes of thermo and stat mech, my professors was giving background on founders, and was like, "yeah...you'll find that they all seem to kill themselves...*awkward laugh* but I wouldn't worry too much about it". I should've. Stat mech definitely killed me. One of the hardest classes.
Then his student spent HIS life studying statistical mechanics and killed himself
Now it's our turn studying statistical mechanics.
@Peter Jordanson Ludwig Boltzmann. Stefan and Boltzmann were different people
5:45 "I had no idea what I was doing but I knew how to do it" big mood
HONESTLY!
Andrew: My experiences may not correspond with yours.
Me, a medieval history major: Oh, okay, no big deal.
lmaoooo
That seems interesting
@@abhabh6896 It is, but it kinda makes history completely unamusing. Just the other day my friend texted me something like "Dude! Did you know that medieval french court tried and executed a pig for murder? That's crazy!". To which I could only reply "Yeah, what about it? I've seen this court record in full, it makes total sense, if you think about the concept of justice at the time".
@@miobiuscrimson2828 There will always be something you do not know about and well you always have the future to be amused by and the present aswell. I for one find medieval history really interesting but you always have my field , the dark abyss of theoretical physics.
Science.....
If it moves.....it's Biology
If it smells....it's Chemistry
If it doesn't work....it's Physics
If it's dirty, environmental science
If it didn't work chemistry would have always remained a mystery.
If its everything.....its physics
For me it was Modern physics just because our professor was from Harvard and he had the highest expectation. we started with 20 students and by finals, there were only 5 students left and only 3 passed.
That's hilarious
Sounds like he is a bad teacher
seems like a shitty professor
omg lol
No offense but your professor sucks. He's a professor so he should've atleast tried to help everyone. What's the point of being a professor if you can't even teach the majority of your students.
Thermodynamics was hard. I couldn't take the heat. Ba-doom-ching!
Shut up
Would have been more funny for a heat transfer class
Well, some year 10 students are learning thermodynamics in graduate level.
Yeah, I know what you mean... the more I study General Relativity, the tensor I get! Ba-doom-Ching!
No. I am a Physics professor and the hardest classes are typically as follows: E&M, Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics in that order.
And here I am complaining about binomial expansion.
Praise \[T]/ ...why
Lmaoooo
To add to your existential crisis most of the students here in India learn Binomial Theorem in their 9th year.
@@mannyheffley9551 Yeah! We learned Combinations and permutations, Binomial expansions and Group theory in grade 9 and 10.
@@mannyheffley9551 In fucking Brazil too. It is common lol
I also found statistical mechanics and thermodynamics challenging, but only for the first time when I learned it (Level 3XXX). It became easier when I learned it at the second time (Level 4XXX). There is actually a famous quotation by Arnold Sommerfeld mentioned by my professor at Level 3XXX:"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, so it doesn't bother you any more." And that's true, at least for the first and second times.
Yeah, It's weird to go into a class where the expectation is that you'll get practice solving some problems, but you won't really understand what you are doing by the end of the semester. I took several classes like that, and it drove me nuts desperately trying to understand the material. For thermodyamics, the textbook and instructor weren't much help either.
Honestly, Solid State Physics killed me. Though, that semester, I got the flu twice, and missed 4 of the 16 weeks, so that whole semester was terrible. I agree that Classical Mechanics was hard. It's like, everything you did before was just a nice sample, then you dug deep into the core of what you were approximating. It's like when you have to take Assembler programming in a Computer Science degree. You thought you knew what was going on, and you thought you knew how to code, but then realized that someone did all the heavy lifting for you.
is it common to have 16 weeks semester ?
not a physics major, but a comp sci major. God bless those who went before me, Assembly is quite annoying.
As a computer engenieer, I appreciate that much more now with that Assembler analogy, thanks!
Can confirm, solid state is scum
I was curious about Solid State Physics to getting really well with Solid State Chemistry....
Computational Physics and Chemistry was hard...
Has to be the best breakdown of the thermodynamic laws i've ever seen hahaha
This youtube channel is gettin me hyped for my physics major
One of the hardest class I had was Advanced Quantum Mechanics. The contents of the class was very interesting and I managed to understand the math and concepts behind it. What made it hard was that the tests and exam covered things completely different from what was discussed in class and assignments.
Quantum mechanics in my undergrad literally felt as hard as a major life tragedy. I tried hard to gain a deep intuition of QM the entire semester and it still feels blotchy.
I love your videos. I'm graduating with a physics BS this semester too. Best feeling is when you don't really know what you're doing in a 4000 level course but by now you've got that sweet sweet skill to guess a method to solve any problem.
Hardest physics classes?
Me: yes
Do all us math majors and physics majors messy hair like this lmao
yea.....I kinda lost my comb for a week so I just stopped caring
Sometimes you're just too tired/busy to shave your face / look decent.
All that matters is what's In the brain...even if it's 7:45 and you're late for your 8am :/
C J I keep it short, less maintenance.
Yup 😂
Intro to astrophysics was a crazy hard class. There was no lecture and the exercises went through so many topics (celestial mechanics, schwarzschild spacetime, quantum ideal gases, nuclear fusion, expansion of the universe, CMB) at record speed.
I'm not a physics student, and I also didn't take nearly enough math classes for this.
agreed, as an astro student it is painful to study astrophysics
No lecture? Strange. Guess I got lucky. My astro professor researched galaxy formation and won teaching awards
@@Astro2024 There are almost no resources to practice the material, hence it makes it even harder
Not a physics major (Electrical Engineering) but took a ton of extra physics courses. Stat Mech nearly destroyed me.
Don't feel so bad now
Tg
Haha
10 years talking about Stern-Gerlach experiment, I cannot relate more to this
I hate that experiment now
You are the wolverine of physics (that's a compliment).
Keep posting you are such an inspiration !
I really identified with your experience when you said you wished you’d developed your mathematical rigor beforehand. I came into university as a physics major but switched over to majoring in pure math and minoring in physics. Upon taking upper level and more rigorous math courses, I realized that a lot of what I struggled with early on, could be attributed to not knowing the math yet.
I really think that thermo/stat mech is something that you have to see multiple times to be able to appreciate. I’ve probably covered thermo in depth in 4-5 courses in my undergrad and stat mech in 2 classes (one more in grad school yay!)
I’m majoring and physics as well and this is my first year of undergrad and I’m having a hard time with classical mechanics as well and damn I love you for making me feel like everyone else struggles with it too 😭🤝
Sucker hahaha
Landau and Lifschitz vol. 1 was my lifeline. Good luck!
Why are you taking classical mechanics as a first year undergrad?
@@EliteTeamKiller2.0 he means newtonian mechanics. Not lagrangian/hamiltonian mechanics
EliteTeamKiller Hi! I honestly have no clue
That was a great description of the laws of thermodynamics
so glad to see classical mechanics on this list i always thought i’m just a bad physics student for never understanding it
I remember back in the good ol’ days... our Q.M. Class took 4 hours a night for homework. It started out with about 45 students and ended with the four of us. (Someone asked if my first edition Shankar was my Bible since I was always carrying it and studying from it.) My E&M class wasn’t “easy”, but the material really “clicked” for me (Reitz, Christie & Milford-did anyone else notice how many problems were converted from Gaussian units?) Yndrian’s “Quantum Chromodynamics had just been published and the prof’s didn’t understand the Standard Model any better than we did. The former QM prof had finally developed some respect for us “fantastic four”. Sadly one lady had to leave school because of visa problems. The highlight of the year was a symposium road trip where we met Dr. Carl Sagan. Thanks for your video and the revival of memories of the good ol’ days.
Honestly, I found university physics far more difficult than anything that followed (except maybe advanced E&M - we used Jackson for half the course but that was more than enough to break my spirit). I had a very bad habit of trying to really understand the material and re-deriving everything on my own - unfortunately, this was a very time-consuming process and it often was not what I was tested on. Though I must admit, that mentality served me well when I moved into upper-division courses.
I have the same habit....Like I was reading a book about economic and I stop reading (for now) when the book talk about game theory because I dot nothing about game theory.....the same with classic mechanic, I stop studying to learn variational calculus
Man, i really tend to do the same shit. It eats away your time like nothing.
I think there are many like you among physics and maths students. I'm one of them. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing.
love this video! I feel so related to your experience Andrew :)
Stellar Astronomy, Quantum, and Cosmology. I haven't taken Thermo/Stat Mec yet but I've had to study special topics of both in 3 of my astronomy classes so, hopefully I'll have an upper hand. We'll see...
I agree. Thermal/Stat-Mech was really demanding. I took it from Dan Schroeder (the guy who wrote the book), it was super interesting and deep but REALLY hard to wrap your head around at times.
Electromagnetism. We used Jackson. That says it all...
Poor soul. I never even touched that unholy book.
So im taking electromagnetism course right now and i decided to give it a try to Jackson's book, i gave up on the third page
Jilal Jahangir it’s a great book to have near as a quick reference, but not a good book to learn from whatsoever. It skips many steps in derivations (most of which are completely non trivial), and usually does not explain why the author is doing things the way he’s doing it. But unfortunately it’s still the most complete book out there. Zangwill comes close (and even has some topics Jackson doesn’t cover at all), but it’s not there yet (maybe next edition?).
We used Griffiths.
I just completed my first Jackson EM class. Great book, but I find it too encyclopedic. And the problems...worthy of PTSD on some scale!
Geometry of general relitivity was pretty tough. (Though it was taught as a mathematics course)
The prerequisite courses are differential geometry, algebra & differential equations. Recomended to be taken with differentiable manifolds.
That sounds really interesting
Sounds more like a first year graduate level class to me. It's pretty rare to find a mathematical treatment of general relativity in undergraduate physics programs. Then again, you said it was a mathematics course, so I can definitely see it.
@@EliteTeamKiller2.0 www-test.drps.ed.ac.uk/14-15/dpt/cxmath11138.htm
Statistical Mechanics was definitely one of the hardest. I also took Atomic Physics, as an elective, and yeah it was hard. Mad props to you for taking it at the same time you took QM, that's some serious flexing right there. I was doubling in Physics and Chemistry, so I got to take 2 semesters of PChem, which is a lot like Statisical Physics (but with labs).
I've just started this year and I kinda expected this list ahaha The first impact was tough indeed but at the same time, let me say your videos make me want to keep going and try- so thanks!
Also, ps: your hair is the best
Love this video, Thank you!
Had to nope out of a 4th year general relativity class when I got there having never heard the word "tensor".
Mathematical methods in Physics. We had like 50 large theorems to learn how to prove in oral exam and like 50 000 smaller theorems.
Trig. lol, getting by though. Thanks for continuing to put these videos out!
Means a lot to know people watch. Good luck josh!
How’d u end up doing in the trig class?
I would love to see a video on your favorite physics classes
As a high school student my mind is already blowing up.
Mahan Pourfakhr i feel that
I'm doing Optics and Therm next semester. I'm looking forward to it.
Atomic physics has to be the class that I look forward to the most. Thanks for the vid Andrew!
It was the most challenging mathematically, but super rewarding. Best of luck!!
I'm currently undergraduate student in third semester and the courses I hated the most until now were experimental physics: classical mechanics, electrodynamics and optics.
It's mostly because in the lecture you only get told some special cases and the formulas you are supposed to use in these cases but don't learn why the things are how they are. It's always like: "It's like that, deal with it!"
The worst of theses was optics because there were just too many different conventions used for everything.
A really annoying example would be Bragg-scattering which sometimes used half the scattering-angle for the Bragg-angle, sometimes the scattering-angle was just the Bragg-angle and once it was pi plus the scattering-angle, and everytime it was totally unclear which convention was used. The exercises were so arbitrary that the only real way to get good marks was knowing the results beforehand and then reverse-engineer what you need to do.
Still I was made to think that as an experimental phycisist you need to know the answer before you tackle the problem and then try to make sense of it, which is just not really my beer.
Sounds like u had a bad teacher. Trust me optics and edyn can be really interesting once though properly
I definitely struggled with QM II in which we covered chapter 5 to the end of Griffith's. The homeworks were super challenging and so were the exams. I also struggeld with EM while it seems a lot of people didn't. Classical mechanics tends to be a very difficult class even for people who started off as physics majors since it's the first "real" physics class that you take.
Couldn't agree more about classical. I'm taking QM II this next semester. Was your EM 1 or two semesters?
My EM was two semesters. My professor was amazing but for some reason it never quite clicked for me completely.
Mohammad hi
Perturbation theory and the variational principle weren’t so bad for me, but when we got to scattering and berry’s phase ... rough times
Classical mechanics 1&2 were my favorite classes in undergrad. I loved learning the math and principles behind complex problems I could see in the real world. Hardest was taking thermo and solid state at the same time
Wave optics seemed pretty tough in the beginning though it sorted out later.
Taking classical mechanics right now and I could not agree with your description more. I thought I was so good at classical physics because I knew all the equations and when to use them. Once I got to this class I realized you actually need to derive what you're doing and if you mess up in one place everything beyond it is wrong. Just going to have to forget everything I know and start from the ground up🤷🏼♂️
Classical Mechanics was the hardest lol You had to learn how to think in physics! Love your vids! I’m an EE major with Photonics Area Pathway and hope to go into a Physics PHD!
4:09 "Thermo and statistical physics was more TdS than anything" well said!
I guess, thinking about it, my three were all third year: Atomic and solid state physics, astrophysics, and optical physics. I found them particularly challenging because neither my study methods nor mathematics hadn't developed well enough (also missed half a sem due to unfortunate circumstances). I wrote out a 3 page latex doc trying to understand first order perturbation for atomic physics. Took it to my lecturer, and he said, "yeah, all you need is this last bit."
Lol, procrastinating on my atomic physics take home final by watching video about why atomic physics is hard. Sigh...
Excuse me while I go calculate some rubidium. So much goddamn rubidium.
I actually liked thermodynamics, it was my favorite. The statistical mechanics portion was then attributed when I took biophysics and basically combined both and applied them to biological macromolecules
Nice shirt.
Edgar Calleros Son goku?
Statistical Mechanics was hard. Our professor was able to get to quantum statistical mechanics. The problem was that I didn't take the thermo class, so I didn't understand the system. Partition functions were fun thought. I am a math and physics major. If you don't mind me asking, what math courses did you take?
Hi, I took the traditional calc 1 - multivariable/ vector calc. I also took a course in linear algebra, differential equations, real analysis, and partial differential equations.
Andrew Dotson Did you take both semesters of real analysis?
Since you took at least the first section in real analysis. I took quantum mechanics too, one thing that I didn't understand was Hilbert space. But just recently I was about to figure out why they use it. One of the main problems in QM going from finite to infinite, because sumations don't always converge. In real analysis, you find out that the reals are complete, i. e. Every Cauchy sequence converges, while the set of complex numbers are not. Notice that Hilbert space is a subspace of complex space. Also, Hilbert space is complete. I just thought it was cool.
Yeah the whole thing that makes hilbert spaces useful in QM is that the functions that live inside it are square integrable, which makes it possible to normalize them. What's really cool is when you learn how to "mix" hilbert spaces with a tensor product, and then use the completeness of the basis vectors to create a new, almost hybrid, eigenstate. And no, I didn't take the second semester of Real Analysis. I plan on taking it at some point, though.
Hey Andrew. Absolutely great video and work. Thanks for taking your time and uploading for us. I am kinda curious. Where did you do you undergrad and what are you doing now (sorry, I am new to your channel :( )? And also, what book did you guys use for your atomic physics class. I have completed by undergrad in electrical engineering but thinking of pursuing physics in grad school. TIA
For me it was Computer Organization. Basically how the hardware organizes data flow.
Even tho im studying cs I find physics extremely interesting although I don’t want to study it myself. Subscribed.
I got 83/90 in a classical mechanics and now my teacher refers to me as "Son Newton"
And you call yourself "Aeroelectrodynamic Boi from the deserts of Algeria" I think I'll call you Confused.
r/iamverysmart
Weird flex but ok
@@OcctySun Preposterous boast, but alas
@@CounterTheAnimatorocn1 Aberrant braggadocio, albeit granted
Started as a biology major too and currently having classical mechanics. I really, really love this course (I didn’t fully understand the calculus of variations part but still). I think a good teacher is mandatory in that kind of course (without a good teacher I can defo tell it would’ve been a nightmare). Here in Quebec, we do physics 1 and 2 as well as cal 1 and 2 in college before we even go to university (we start uni with classical), and physics 2 was my worst class. I have ptsd from it to the point that I’m extremely scared about electromagnetism next semester.
i personally am having a fair bit of trouble digesting thermodynamics, i find some concepts very confusing and to me it almost seems contradictory at some points due to my misunderstanding.
I took Classical Mechanics straight out of Uni. Physics II, and hadn’t had differential equations yet. The professor was hilariously vague and unhelpful, but it made the homework assignments genuinely rewarding to complete (when we actually managed to complete them). Its made Engineering Dynamics a cakewalk though!
my current top 3 are:
1. plasma physics (deriving all the wavefunctions for differect scenarios, and using the momentum, continuity and heat equation. And on top of that; Landau damping)
2. Classical mechanics (should imo be taken later on after the fundamental maths courses)
3. Quantum mechanics (many new concepts, didnt have proper training in differential equations beforehand and SPIN :-P )
i so wish i could have taken plasma physics as an undergrad ... totally jealous.
Do you study the work of Cedric Villani ?
Classical Mechanics *is* a fundamental maths course!
Well, that’s part-joke: calculus and differential equations are of great help in dealing with it. But (the way the taught me) a whole bunch of maths was derived at the course itself, because it is not generally taught in maths courses.
I find it interesting that you have Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics on your list.
At the university I attended in Denmark, the exam for the physics majors with the highest failure rate was actually thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
This is the most honest channel ever 😀
Thermodynamics was challenging, but mainly because we had a massive programming project worth a third of the final grade, and I was just learning basic programming in another class.
Having the flu a week before the final didn't help either.
I like how all physics majors of many different universities go through almost the same experience.
Approximately the same.which = same.
Also I'm doing theoretical particle physics at the moment and it hurts my brain but I will probably understand come exam season
...but then he killed himself lmao
I am studying a level mechanics recently and i found it hard too. but another branch of mathematics course which is pure maths i's much easier though I cann't think of a reason why. Were you good at meths when you were in high school? Did you do any mechanics-like study back to that time?
Correct on classical. That was one of the hardest classes I ever took, everyone thought it was hard, even people good at it. That was literally the moment I saw how smart physicist professors could be. My professor didn't use any notes at all and could answer absolutely any question at all in the book without thinking, or cracking the book. In some of the classes, he would just ask us what we wanted to know. It literally made you(your convention :)) feel stupid. But looking back It wasn't really hard because a lot of things you could visualize, whereas other classes took a lot more effort to visualize problems. However, the main thing I learned was the amount of rigor needed to do other classes.
I'm taking TFS (pretty much thermodynamics for engineering) next year. It's a 12 credit, year long course at my school. Kinda nervous about it but I'm hoping I'll do okay.
I can totally relate with you on classical mechanics man.
I just hope my Seminar on General Relativity turns out alright ^^
I thought electricity and magnetism was the hardest followed by mechanics. I'm an EE student tho
your videos terrify me. i'm finishing up my sophmore year this semester and i start modern physics 1, calculus based astronomy/astrophysics and calc 3 this fall. I have literally no idea what you're talking about (well except the thermodynamics). what have i gotten myself into? why couldn't i have just decided to do something easy like marine biology like i was originally wanting to do?
I know that feeling. Looking at a problem not knowing what it really us but getting done and right anyway. Its a hint of being a master feels like. I had this happen to me econometrics, and international economics
One thing that you talked about that I couldn’t agree more with is the lack of mathematical knowledge. Nothing frustrates me more than a physics course where I am introduced to a math concept that I have never used and expected to pick up on it immediately. Sure, I can memorize solutions but it feels so dirty to use something I don’t have a clue about. I’m trying to plan my math courses in a way that will hopefully prepare me for upcoming physics courses.
I am about to take advanced classical mechanics and statistical mechanics next term. So thank you for that warning.
Atomic physics and solid state physics sound brutal (but really interesting). God bless I'm an engineering major and only need to take the modern physics course that briefly mentions that
Feynman's lectures on statistical mechanics are fire. First time I found the subject enjoyable.
The math is a bug problem for me, especially when the profs are so up and down. I had my worst prof on advanced calc but my best one in complex variables for example. The only one left is PDEs for me now so I'm hoping I can do better in the physics side. I have thermal and quantum next year plus class mech 2 and statistical as a choice in the final year. I also have electricity and magnetism. Here's hoping I can get into the groove of things as things are so fast paced in my university, you can't catch a breath. I also might have research next fall as well since I couldn't find it in the summer. Wish me luck
I try to act tough but its these type of videos that sets me to my real level
I had the same experience with classical thermodynamics vs Stat.Mech, only slightly more so and for slightly different reasons. I barely struggled through classical thermo, but once we got into partition functions and canonical ensembles everything clicked for me and thermodynamics became very easy.
I took a high level course in Fluid Mech, and that got pretty gnarly. I never took the lab courses because I'm a theoretical physicist (and actually now I'm a mathematical biologist, moving in the opposite direction to you), but I heard some horror stories from my classmates. GR and String theory were surprisingly easy, but I had the advantage of having taken the math in advance.
I struggled with statistical thermodynamics. Our school also has this intro to particle physics and though I didn’t get a bad grade because we were doing really introductory stuff I couldn’t understand what I was doing at all so yay
I also took a course on series (summation on different series, power series, fourier series, fourier and laplace transform). Really useful on certain physics problems we face on applied physics.
I got an A in Electric Circuits 2 because most of the problems were about modelling mechanical systems into a form of transient RLC circuits in s domain and then solved using Laplace transform. I was good at using Laplace transform then. But I was actually weak at electricity concepts. And I could pass Automatic Control courses, thanks to Laplace transform. :)
quantum computing course was the hardest, as I am failing this semester.
The hardest undergraduate course for me was definitely General Relativity without having taken E&M yet. I took it alongside Quantum Mechanics, and QM made so much more sense in comparison.
I have one class to finish my physics minor (I’m an aerospace engineering major)... anyway, Quantum 1 or E&M 2?
Wondering if you have done Astrophysics, the most tripping subject in the world...
I think I'm in the same situation as you when it comes to atomic physics. At my university, this is called "advanced quantum", it's a fourth year course covering some of the concepts you mentioned like perturbation theory, and I haven't taken intro to quantum yet but I got permission to take advanced quantum as it is only offered every other year. If you were able to do this then I hope I will too. I'm also taking modern optics next term as a fourth year elective, however I'm only in my third year. I'm taking classical mechanics (w/ general relativity) this term, I heard it was super cool but not the easiest haha, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. At my uni, stat mech and thermo are two separate courses, I just did stat mech last term, it was sort of boring in my opinion, although it got kind of cool by the end when we started talking about bosons / fermion statistics, thermo seems like it's very different than any other types of physics. I'm really into math heavy stuff and theoretical physics, so I'm looking forward to this semester. Any idea on what you'll be doing after you graduate?
Keep up the great videos dude!
Cheers
Michael Edwards that’s awesome that your classical mechanics does general relativity. We only did special relativity in my electrodynamics. And in my opinion thermo-statmech should be two course. Mine seemed a little rushed with it just being one. As for after I graduate, I’m actually in the process of applying to PhD programs for theoretical physics. Good luck with your studies!
I liked thermo! I loved all the partial derivatives and holding certain values constant to find the others. the course that hurt me was Electronics. Basically a course in micro electronics I scrapped by with a c
The Atomic Physics segment was spot on. We had 6 people in my class and my professor LOVED Stern-Gerlach
Maybe because he was more comfortable talking about it
The hardest one I had was Mathematical Physics, it was essentially a lecture on the math of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory where we did complex analysis, functional analysis, distribution theory and random walks
We have a 3rd semester course called theoretical mechanics. We were first introduced to lagrangians, hamiltonians here. Also perturbation theory, both time dependent and time independent. It was pretty challangeing to learn all that maths and physics in the same course.
The biggest issue with a lot of the units I struggled with was that we didn't have just a classical mechanics unit, or just a quantum mechanics unit. Instead they were mixed with other, equally difficult topics, so when it came exam time you needed to be on top of your game for multiple different fields for a single unit.
A couple examples of these units are Physics 2A, which was Quantum mechanics (covered the stuff you'd expect, solving and normalising wave functions of single particle systems in various different potentials) and EM waves (EM was went up to pretty complicated electrodynamics, didn't just stick with electro and magnetostatics).
Another really tough one for me was called Physics 2B which had solid state physics, special relativity and intro to general relativity and classical mechanics all in the one unit. Each topic on it's own was not too bad, but having to know all of them really well for the exam was tough.
The hardest unit I did though was simply called modern optics. I did this in my first semester second year, and it was the first time the unit was running. After the semester was over the university changed it to an honours level unit without changing almost any of the content. For reference, there were 16 people that enrolled in the unit, by the time the exam rolled around, only 8 people showed up, and of that only 3 of us passed. It covered everything from diffraction and interference to holography, non-linear optics and advanced imaging theory (Nano- and Bio-Photonics). On top of all of this we also had to do 6 labs, and write reports for each of them (compared to the usual 3-4 in other units) and do a 3,000 word review paper on a modern optics technique, including at least 20 citations from peer reviewed papers. It was brutal. I scraped through that with a 55% from memory.
Wow that's very different!!
The hardest was weather and the environment, because you were expected to memorise way too much stuff. 2nd hardest was the 2nd year Maths class actually taught by someone from the maths department, which contained Laplace transforms. Luckily, when I did an engineering masters a couple of years later they taught us how we could use Laplace Transforms (or s transforms) to solve problems with tables of transforms and without having to worry about any of that pesky derivation, proof or understanding. Lab was pretty tough too.
My highschool physics 11 course, because I too did not have the prerequisites, so I didn't even know slope or equation of a line, and applying any radical more complicated than a whole number root was a new concept for me