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Anonymous at Wed, 12 Mar 2025 23:23:40 UTC No. 16617285
>be math undergrad
>sign up for physics course (E&M)
>Professor just rants over useless pre-written notes
>no rigor
>no idea what he's talking about
>doesn't do any concrete examples in class
>can't pay attention to a single lecture due to his lecturing style
>skip several homeworks
>show up to exam without studying
>somehow get the highest grade in the class
how do physics majors not kill themselves? this shit is bleak. I'm never taking another ph*sics course again.
Anonymous at Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:08:55 UTC No. 16617316
>>16617285
kek, they have an aversion to math, so they design their undergrad courses to avoid any and all math that would simplify it and make it make sense. Then come grad school, the only ones that can handle it are those that learned some math, and the rest just become experimentalists who have no idea what's going on.
Anonymous at Thu, 13 Mar 2025 01:21:53 UTC No. 16617384
>>16617285
Rigor is different in physics because they're models; what you're taught in Griffith's E&M isn't even remotely close to the reality of QED. So the rigor is properly applying the rules you're presented.
Specifically with Griffith's E&M the first test is almost always just on vector calculus anyways, so if you're good at calculus it should be really easy.
In general you picked the least physicsy course of all physics too; I'd guess you did this on purpose. Much of the actual physics is in understanding things like boundary conditions (which aren't even mathematically real), and developing proper intuition.
Obviously learning how to calculate the capacitance of a spherical shell capacitor or the electric field of an infinite plane is entirely fucking useless IRL. But if you understand things properly then you can go apply them to semiconductors nicely for example.
As for the professor, you probably have some ESL issue or a lecturer who isn't really qualified.
Anonymous at Thu, 13 Mar 2025 01:39:36 UTC No. 16617396
>>16617384
>As for the professor, you probably have some ESL issue or a lecturer who isn't really qualified.
nah he just made the terrible decision to use his pre-written notes instead of actually doing derivations and examples on the whiteboard in class. also i dont think he wanted to teach this class
Anonymous at Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:25:26 UTC No. 16617442
>>16617396
>also i dont think he wanted to teach this class
... are you in your first year or something?
Very few professors want to teach any class. Fewer still a large undergraduate course, particularly if this is a 200 level instead of 400.