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United States24745 Posts
I want to start putting together my own physics reference sheets. They will cover all of the (applied) math and physics that you probably need to know in order to complete a bachelors in physics. It won't include easy things like the derivative of x^n; it will include things that are easy to forget (for example, everything I've forgotten in the 5 years since I studied physics). Ideally I will put together a document in latex (excuse to finally learn latex) that covers all of this information.
My first steps are:
- Put together a rough list of the topics I want to cover
- Learn how to create the document using latex
Once I've done that, I need to:
- Go through each topic and assemble a list of all the individual formulas, principles, facts, etc, that are important
- Decide exactly how I want to arrange/format/design the document
This is a pretty large undertaking, I believe. There already exist reference sheets that cover much of the material I plan to include, but I'm not aware of any one source that has pretty much all of the undergrad physics/math materials you need. I don't see why I can't use pre-existing reference sheets to help me assemble my lists, but they won't be sufficient, and I won't include everything from them (I really don't need to include F=ma or density=m/V lol)
Here's some of the topics I should probably get to work on
- Useful calculus (1, 2, 3) formulas, theorems, and tricks that help whens olving physics problems.
- Useful methods for solving various types of differential equations
- Useful information that's easy to forget regarding linear algebra
- Key concepts and formulas for classical mechanics
- Key concepts and formulas for electricity and magnetism
- Key concepts and formulas for quantum mechanics
I'm leaving off statistical mechanics and other parts of modern physics for now since I need to study those a lot before I can even begin to create reference sheets for them, although they certainly belong on the list as well.
At this point, if you know of any resources that already exist that would be helpful, or replace some (or all) of the work I plan to do, please let me know. Also, if you have any suggestions regarding how I should do this process or what information should/shouldn't be included let me know.
What does/doesn't get included is going to be rather subjective no matter what approach I use, so I'm going to make many executive decisions (although suggestions are still appreciated).
edit: If anyone can give me a sample latex document that is already appropriately formatted that I can just edit in my information it would help me get started... latex seems overly complicated
  
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Gonna stick some relativity on there or no? I'd at least put down special relativity.
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United States24745 Posts
On March 25 2012 00:18 EternaLLegacy wrote:
Gonna stick some relativity on there or no? I'd at least put down special relativity.
Yea I definitely should put some SR... not sure exactly where it would go, but that's not a big concern right now.
GR I don't know... currently I don't really know how to do much GR :p
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Neat! I'm sure you know it's extensively documented online, but if you want help with anything LaTeX related, feel free to PM me.
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Doesn't a bachelor in physics also include thermodynamics ?
e: okay you said you'd leave off statistical mechanics, that is used at lot in thermodynamics, so I guess I got my answer.
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Special relativity could be its own topic, though I don't know how fruitful that'd be. I want to say that if it's placed in one of the three mentioned, it would be EM just because EM is where much of the motivation comes from (Einstein's paper was called On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, after all), but it's pretty dependent on how the reference sheets are used.
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Are you doing this just for fun? Because it's a huge undertaking.
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United States24745 Posts
Ah thanks I'll get this. It certainly doesn't have the depth of undergrad physics but it has a fair amount of material I can refer to.
I think you should still include things like F = ma for completeness though.
I'm thinking the length of the document I want to create will literally double if I include everything for completeness (if not more). On the other hand I might choose to include everything eventually anyway.
On March 25 2012 01:03 hugman wrote:
Are you doing this just for fun? Because it's a huge undertaking.
I'm studying for the physics GRE anyway so making this document will be very helpful in preparing.
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I majored in physics in school, and I used latex for _everything_ (ie, class notes, homework, lab work, everything). One thing I found particularly helpful is to define short names for all the derivatives you'll be using frequently. For example, instead of using "\frac{\derivative x}{\derivative t}" you can macro it to "\dxdt". Over the years I've built a collection of these. You can grab them online from
http://www.dabbelt.com/~palmer/bbs/2012-03-24-latex/
If you want, I can also provide git access (as I do occasionally make changes to these). You're free to do whatever you want with the macros (just don't sue me because I can't spell derivative  ).
Another tip is that if you're planning to use latex you should also learn make, as it makes building latex a whole bunch less painful. I wrote tek to generate makefiles for latex as writing makefiles is a bit of a pain.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ptek/
Good luck!
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Putting all of physics in a reference sheet seems like a mini book in the making. I would suggest picking up a general physics book and then just going from equations from cover to cover. If its any help, I would recommend my electromagnetics book as I particularly liked the format of the equations: Elements of Electromagnetics by Sadiku. The book itself is ok, but the glob of equations given are in a particularly nice format. Who is the intended audience of your reference sheet, under grad physics/engineering students? If so, you might want to consider adding the basic equations in there too (F=ma never hurts). Good luck with the reference sheet!
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On March 25 2012 00:19 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2012 00:18 EternaLLegacy wrote:
Gonna stick some relativity on there or no? I'd at least put down special relativity. Yea I definitely should put some SR... not sure exactly where it would go, but that's not a big concern right now. GR I don't know... currently I don't really know how to do much GR :p
It's okay, nobody really does.
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17018 Posts
If you decide to just laze out, you could write it by hand and I'll TeX it up for you. It'd be useful for me as well so I wouldn't mind doing it :D
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This sounds absolutely amazing micronesia ^^
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Uh, I may be slightly out of my class here, but I still have all my physics notes from Grade 11 University level Physics class, and I can post them if they might help in any way.
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Do you have your exam formula sheets from your undergrad days? Put all of those together, add a bit of multivariable and you should be set
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I guess you could just go through the Feynman Lecture series (I recommend buying it but im sure you can swipe a pdf somewhere easy enough).
The problem generally with this kind of thing though is you lose context for any formulas, and by condensing it all into one you'll have to be very clear on which symbols you're using to represent what, as between topics they vary greatly, even in some topics the same symbol can crop up for different things.
Interesting idea, with google being so accessible though I don't really see how its all that necessary unless you're in your first two years of undergrad. Once you go beyond that its easy to just look things up depending on what you need, and all that maths will be well dug into your memory by then.
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United States24745 Posts
On March 25 2012 03:51 adwodon wrote:
Interesting idea, with google being so accessible though I don't really see how its all that necessary unless you're in your first two years of undergrad. Once you go beyond that its easy to just look things up depending on what you need, and all that maths will be well dug into your memory by then.
If you continue to study physics you will need to know most of this stuff by heart. Just having all of the information well organized can help you keep track of everything (doubly so if you are the one making the list).
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United States10328 Posts
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United States24745 Posts
This was a final in quantum mechanics 1? Just double checking.
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Fascinating how different emphasis can be put on different aspects of a subject like quantum based on your professor.
I'm starting graduate school in the Fall and have qual exams I need to spend some time studying for this summer. This thread might be a useful resource! That, or over the course of my studies I could contribute 
Bummer you aren't tackling stat mech, that's by far my weakest area hahaha
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United States24745 Posts
On March 25 2012 10:21 Duka08 wrote:Fascinating how different emphasis can be put on different aspects of a subject like quantum based on your professor. I'm starting graduate school in the Fall and have qual exams I need to spend some time studying for this summer. This thread might be a useful resource! That, or over the course of my studies I could contribute Bummer you aren't tackling stat mech, that's by far my weakest area hahaha
Oh I will tackle it... when the time comes.
BTW we should work together for sure. If you are interested you can pm me!
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Hey just a question...where can physics lead you after your degree? i am thinking of doing physics but not sure where it can take you
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Physics majors can get jobs in a lot of places, including wall street, law (JD), medicine (if you just take the pre-med required courses, MD), engineering firms, NASA/spaceX/lockheed martin/ge/etc.
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Good luck! Even though I won't understand most of the completed product, I still love admiring the works of others.
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This would be absolutely wonderful for those of us (like me) in the process of pursuing a Bachelor's in physics. Thanks in advance! :D
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United States10328 Posts
On March 25 2012 04:59 micronesia wrote:This was a final in quantum mechanics 1? Just double checking.
Actually quantum II, though really it's just a more mathy version of quantum I because most physics majors at my school haven't taken linear algebra by the time they take quantum (just a guess; I'm a math major so I'm not sure  )
On March 25 2012 01:24 palmerdabbelt wrote:I majored in physics in school, and I used latex for _everything_ (ie, class notes, homework, lab work, everything). One thing I found particularly helpful is to define short names for all the derivatives you'll be using frequently. For example, instead of using "\frac{\derivative x}{\derivative t}" you can macro it to "\dxdt". Over the years I've built a collection of these. You can grab them online from http://www.dabbelt.com/~palmer/bbs/2012-03-24-latex/Good luck!
Waiiiit, you use \derivative instead of d!? (or does it replace \partial?)
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United States24745 Posts
Thanks, I added it to my list of resources for now.
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On March 25 2012 00:16 micronesia wrote:- Learn how to create the document using latex
Tip is to use lyx instead, it is a graphical interface for latex.
http://www.lyx.org/
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On March 25 2012 00:19 micronesia wrote:
GR I don't know... currently I don't really know how to do much GR :p
General relativity isn't required for most physics undergraduate degrees. I would suggest that if you're doing this for your own interest you may want to consider getting into it a little bit. At least a basic understanding of how tensor analysis and differential geometry contribute to the theory in the field is something that can have all kinds of other interesting applications in other areas. (Tensors can simplify a lot of classical mechanics problems, for example, as well.)
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EPT
