“Edge effects” is one of the quintessential examples of handwaving in physics students.
18 Mar 2019
I actually like going through calculations, but there’s no doubt that this can definitely be classified as “grunt work”.
15 Mar 2019
I love how a student’s job in the class is to convince the professor that they got really accurate results while also finding a bunch of sources of error that actually contribute in a significant way.
13 Mar 2019
“Wow, so that’s what “elementary” means? I don’t even want to think about what an advanced textbook looks like then!”
08 Mar 2019
This isn’t just a mathematics thing. I think I hear my professors speak like this even more in my physics classes. I guess we like to be really graphic in our descriptions.
04 Mar 2019
I can’t tell you the number of times a dead-simple proof eluded me for many hours, only to see the “obvious” answer later.
25 Feb 2019