#Robert Sabin

[theclinch]

Bayou Passion by Jane Archer

Art by Robert Sabin

Published 1991 by Zebra

ISBN 9780821734698

[sweetsavageflame]

Review: Climb the Highest Mountain by Rosanne Bittner

SPOILER ALERT ⚠ The Book This review is of Climb the Highest Mountain, book #5 in the “Savage Destiny” series by Rosanne Bittner. The Plot The year is 1864. The Civil War is coming to an end, and more white migration west is going to soon affect Abigail Trent Monroe, her husband “Cheyenne” Zeke Monroe, and their seven children. The more immediate threat to the Monroes comes in the form of…

[thunderstruck9]

Robert Ballagh (Irish, 1943), The Rape of the Sabines (study for), 1970. Gouache on paper, 47.3 x 62.8 cm. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

[notesonphotography]

Puddle Jumpers

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

How to learn physics as an adult

I'm creating this post in response to some posts @un-ionizetheradlab made the other day, but I'm creating this as a guide to anyone this is relevant for. It's going to be a long post, but pick and choose what to do from this list based on what works for you and what your goals are, whether it's just to gain basic scientific literacy or become a physicist (or something in between). Also remember that it's a journey not a sprint, so it's ok if you don't understand physics at first (and if it makes you feel better, physics was one of my worst subjects in school and now I have a master's degree in physics). Without further ado:

First Thing's First

There are some mathematical methods you need to learn to understand physics; there's no way around this:

Vectors: This is the most important thing to learn for physics, how to use vectors. It seemed every mathematics or physics class I took in my first year of my physics degree started with an introduction to vectors, and for good reason. You can learn about how vectors work on Khan Academy for free.

Matrices and Tensors: Once you've mastered vectors, learn about matrices and linear algebra, and perhaps go on to learning about tensors once you're at it. You can at least get the basics about matrices from Khan Academy, but you might want to invest in a linear algebra textbook.

Calculus: I said vectors are the most important thing to learn for physics, but it actually might be calculus. If you have absolutely no previous knowledge of calculus, you can watch the video "Calculus at a Fifth Grade Level" on YouTube; it's a little more advanced than fifth grade level but can give you a good feel for what calculus is about. Once you've done that, there are multiple calculus courses available on Khan Academy. There's also a calculus course available on Brilliant, but it might only be available through the paid version.

Ordinary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems: You don't need to learn these right away, but if you want to do physics at the upper undergraduate level, you'll need to learn these at some point.

2. Learning to Think Like a Scientist

Some suggestions of apps and things to watch if you don't know much about science so you can start thinking like a scientist:

SciShow: If you don't know much science at all, SciShow on YouTube is a good place to start, I used to watch it and as I recall it's more focused on life sciences but there's some physics videos there, too.

Ciencias De La Ciencia: This is sort of a Spanish version of SciShow but it's more physics-focused. At least some of the videos have subtitles if you don't know Spanish.

Cosmos: If you haven't seen Cosmos (either the old version with Carl Sagan or the new version with Neil DeGrasse Tyson), it's very good and at least some of the episodes are available for free online. It's more pop-science and history of science than actual science content, but at least they make a point of using anecdotes from the history of science to illustrate how the scientific method works.

Sabine Hossenfelder: Highly recommend her YouTube channel; she's one of the most intellectually honest scientific communicators in the world nowadays. Her videos are a good illustration of how to think like a scientist. She also has a blog and has written a few books.

Brilliant: This is an app with mathematics and science courses that places an emphasis on problem-solving. Most of the courses are only available on the paid version of the app (but you should be able to get a discount on it if you're subscribed to any mainstream science YouTubers), but even the free version gives you access to a few courses, plus a forum where people post problems. I had this app back in the day and liked solving problems on the forum (no idea if it's changed since then).

3. Books to Study

If you're committed to learning physics you should study from some textbooks:

Physics LibreTexts: This is a whole collection of university-level physics textbooks for free online. It's an invaluable resource for learning physics. Use it to learn classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, modern physics (but don't jump into quantum mechanics straight away if you're just starting out in physics).

Landau and Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics: This was the physics school curriculum in the Soviet Union; it's a little dated now but if you're just learning the basics it can't be beat given the excellent pedagogy. It's easy enough to find copies of it online, especially on Russian sites. Most if not all of the textbooks in the series have been translated into English, but if you know any Russian, the original is easy to follow.

Introduction to Electrodynamics by David J. Griffiths: Once you've learned mechanics, modern physics and some electricity and magnetism get yourself a copy of this textbook; you can get used editions on Amazon for a reasonable enough price. American physics majors are obsessed with this textbook, refer to it as the Bible, and for good reason.

Every Life is on Fire by Jeremy England: This isn't a textbook, but reading it took me back to my statistical mechanics class and it's way more readable than any actual statmech textbook so if you are interested in learning statmech, this book is a good start. It's actually a general reading book about England's ideas about the origin of life, interspersed with some parallels to the Hebrew Bible because England is also a rabbi. He actually has some interesting ideas about the philosophy of science, though they can be difficult to get behind, so if you're interested go listen to a podcast where they interview him (obligatory I don't condone the Kahaneist politics he sometimes promotes).

4. Learn About Research and Experiments

Physics is an experimental science, so expose yourself to some experiments:

Look for PDFs of high school physics labs online. You can find some for free and it should be cheap enough to do the experiments at home.

Read scientific papers on topics that interest you to try and understand what's happening today. If you find them difficult to understand, try reading older papers and go from there, for example, in undergrad I did a research internship relating to neutron stars, but I found some of the recent scientific papers difficult to understand, but reading the 1938 paper "On Massive Neutron Cores" by Oppenheimer and Volkoff helped me to understand neutron stars better. (When I returned to some of those same papers during my master's degree, I was proud to have understood them well.)

5. Take University-Level Physics Courses

You can take university-level physics courses without committing to a degree:

Search online for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). You can find MOOCs on multiple sites about many physics topics, and they're often free (sometimes you have to pay for them).

If you live in the United States, you can take physics classes at your local community college.

You can enroll in online physics courses through Open University, based in London but you can take the courses from anywhere. It's expensive, but you pay by the credit so you don't have to pay for a whole year of tuition if you're just taking one course.

If you happen to have free time in the summer and the money for it, many American universities (and elite British universities) offer summer courses that one can enroll in even if they don't attend the university. These are usually in-person classes.

6. Get a Physics Degree

Getting a physics degree is ultimately the only course of action if you've decided to become a physicist, the recommended course of action if you're ultimate goal is a PhD in the history of science or philosophy of science, and a good idea if learning physics has made you want a career in science communication of science education. There's no shame in being a non-traditional age student; in both my bachelor's and master's degree in physics I knew students who were non-traditional age. The downside of this is that it's a bad financial decision to get a degree, especially if it's a second bachelor's degree, but there are ways to lessen the financial burden of a degree:

If you attend an American university with American tuition, you can usually get an on-campus job, though that's pocket change compared to the costs of tuition.

On the bright side, if you already have a bachelor's degree you can probably get credit for general requirements at American universities, so a second bachelor's degree in physics might not take long.

You can also do a part-time degree while you work at many universities.

Just some general advice, if you go the American university route go to a university with a Society of Physics Students and get a student membership in American Physical Society; you get all kinds of benefits like access to Physics Today magazine, scholarships, internships, conferences, an honour society induction.

All that said, it's difficult to attend an American university without losing money. For that matter it's difficult to attend any university in the world without losing money, but you can lessen that burden by going to a country where university is cheaper. There the limiting factor is going to be language; although English is the international language of physics and the medium of most postgraduate physics degrees around the world, physics bachelor's degrees are usually in the local language. Some possible exceptions I found to this, for those who are not fluent in a language other than English:

Apparently there are world-class English-medium physics degree programmes in France? I figure there must be some kind of catch given the way the French are about their language, but given the high research output France has in physics, this is worth getting into.

There are English-medium physics bachelor's degrees in the Czech Republic, and tuition there is pretty affordable (for the English-language degrees; it's free for Czech-language degrees if you happen to be fluent in Czech). I don't know Czechia to have a lot of physics research output today, but back in the day Prague was a major centre of scientific research (Einstein briefly lived and worked as a physics professor in Prague), so it you're goal is to do a PhD in the history of science...I'm just gonna say that there's an English-medium physics bachelor's degree programme at Charles University and you'd have time when you're not studying to explore the city and it's history (but you should learn some Czech if you're going to live there).

University degrees in South Africa are usually English-medium, and tuition there is pretty affordable. There's also a fair amount of research output from South African universities. (Though I understand not wanting to live in South Africa.)

[ginger-grimm]

OC HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE 2024

Day 24: What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?

My Glee OCs In Various Horror Movies

Celeste Morris in Pearl

Sabine Mitchell in The Blair Witch Project

Wyatt Weaver in The Evil Dead

Harriet Ross in Carrie

Ryan Lewis in Midsommar

Jordan Roberts in Candyman

Charlie Novak in The Silence of the Lambs

Stevie Howard in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Flora Redding in Creep

Angus Lee in The Hitcher

x

TAGLIST: @eddysocs @ocs-supporting-ocs @foxesandmagic @veetlegeuse @decennia @hiddenqveendom @arrthurpendragon @luucypevensie @nikosasaki @noratilney @wordspin-shares @oneirataxia-girl @endless-oc-creations @stelstellakidd @andromedalestrange @far-shores @daughter-of-melpomene @bibaybe

[davidhudson]

Happy 74th, Sabine Azéma.

1989 photo by Robert Doisneau.

[pamelaaminou]

Monday's Photography Inspiration - Sabine Weiss

“I take photographs to hold on to the ephemeral, capture chance, keep an image of something that will disappear, gestures, attitudes, objects that are reminders of our brief lives. The camera picks them up and freezes them at the very moment that they disappear.” Sabine Weiss Sabine Weiss, born in 1924 in the picturesque Swiss-French border town of Saint-Gingolph, embarked on a lifelong journey…

[david-talks-sw]

I wanna share a moment of questionable reaching to support “criticism” of something in SW but first I just wanna check.

You think the Sabine saber wound discourse is dumb, right? With some people freaking out about her surviving what I think is one of, if not the least severe saber impalement we’ve ever seen

Yes.

I agree that maybe they should stop with the "stabbed-victim-surviving" trope simply because of how many eye-rolls and polemics it causes. At this point if someone gets stabbed by a lightsaber, I know they'll probably live.

But that being said, like... Sabine is a regular in the show.

They're not gonna kill her off in Episode #1. I know Sabine will live because she's too important to die so soon.

I know Sabine will live because characters like her don't die before addressing, let alone completing, a character arc.

I know Sabine will live because she's emanating major protag energy and isn't played by an actor with secondary-character energy like Paul Giamatti (god bless him).

I know Sabine will live because I'm a moviegoer in 2024, as long as a character isn't straight-up decapitated, then has their soul set on fire for good measure, I assume there's a chance they're not dead yet. You show me someone - ANYONE - getting stabbed anywhere that isn't the heart? They'll live. Because them's the movie rules.

Literally any of the above out-of-universe reasons trump the deadliness of any in-universe laser sword.

Does me having this approach suck because it implies that mainstream films and shows have lost all ability to craft stakes I can actually perceive as high?

Yes.

But at least it stops me from freaking out when something like that happens, like it did with Sabine. The whole time people were bitching about it, the only thing that came to my mind was "who cares? seriously?"

[o-link]

Les Tontons flingueurs - Lino Ventura

[filmy420]

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

[robynsassenmyview]

Music for the End of Time

"Music for the End of Time", a review of Matthias Glasner's film 'Dying' on the European Film Festival in South Africa, until 20 October 2024.

ORCHESTRAL maneuvres to make you weep. Lars Eidinger is ‘Tom’ in Dying, which screens online at the European Film Festival in South Africa. Photograph courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter. IF THERE IS one film that should be deemed mandatory in this year’s European Film Festival in South Africa, it is unequivocally Matthias Glasner’s Dying. Clocking in at over three hours, this magnificent and…

[rwpohl]

tatort 99: ende der vorstellung, georg marischka 1979

[taxi-davis]

Flying Image by Thomas Meyer-Hermann

[randomrichards]

KIM’S VIDEO:

Lost video store

It’s tapes shipped to Sicily

Heist like in movies