Physics blr.

final year phys/astro student || 22, (she/her) || sometimes I study and post about it.

[aru]

Tumblr Code.

[geekishchic]

If I ever see any of you in public, the code is “I like your shoelaces”

that way we know we’re from tumblr without revealing anything

I’m just going to say this to strangers until i find a tumblr person

must keep reblogering!! Im going to be so suspicious if any one tells me this now!

Remember the answer is: I stole them from the president.

always reblog tumblr identification

[hobbinch]

This is an absolute tumblr relic. I feel like an archaeologist right now. This is incredible that this is on my dash.

[crystalistrappedintheinternet]

Actually no this is the post of the decade

[tomurakii]

Reawakening this ancient beast of a post for the end of the decade lmao.

[0hi0is0nfire-deactivated2020041]

“Reblogering”

[thephotomagician]

*le gasp* i found the anciet code

[sleepy-bebby]

NASA visualization showing monthly global temperature anomalies between the years 1880-2021.

[inkskinned]

i have to believe somewhere, someone is trying a taco for the first time. someone is taking their first shower. someone is coming home to a new puppy.

i have to believe that this winter, someone new to snow will pull out a 5 dollar plastic sled and throw themselves down a hill, just to try it.

i think i'm probably lucky to be familiar with sunrises. i live in an area where the lightning bugs dance in their cocktail hours. i take chickadees for granted.

today i saw a tree that had changed to fall colors, and my first reaction was to grimace. i love autumn, but i hate the cold. i don't want it to be winter yet.

but how lucky, to live in a place where the leaves do change color - so bright and vibrant that people make treks from around the world just to look at what i grew-up-with. my mom's friend was a teacher in florida. she used to ask us to mail her an assortment of leaves, just to show her children - to prove to them yes, they really do turn yellow and orange and red.

last year i finally tried pumpkin spice for the first time. someone this year will find a new favorite knitting pattern. someone's favorite band will drop a new album. artists will make things we haven't yet imagined. there will be chalk drawings and magnet poetry and karaoke and recipes and laughing.

it is easy to forget. this was all new to me, once. and when it was - well, it was just all so easy to love.

[tiredphysicist]

How did u manage to get a Masters in Physics at 22? That’s just incredible, but ig I don’t understand the process.

Hi ! I started an integrated masters degree at 18 , it was 4 years long so I'm 22 now. It's basically the same as doing a Bsc (3 years) followed by an Msc (1 year, depending on where you do it). The only difference is instead of 2 degrees you straight away get just one masters degree :)

Whichever route you take, the duration is pretty much the same.

[tiredphysicist]

I'm proud to announce that I finished uni and I now have a Masters degree in Physics. My fellow physicists, what job do you have after your degree? I want to go into data analysis but I'm not fond of coding the whole day. What other kinds of jobs can I pick up with my transferable skills ? I want to do a PhD but not right away. Ideally I'd like a job that would help me get a PhD.

[tiredphysicist]

Breakfast in bed + Physics <3

[tiredphysicist]

Is there a tumblr chat for physicists in uni that I could join ? If there isn't, I'd love to create one ! Let me know !!

[afloweroutofstone]

How we know that the US is experiencing another major wave of Covid-19: online reviews complaining that popular Yankee Candles have no scent are up again

[tiredphysicist]

I just don't care anymore. I always feel chosing this course was a mistake. Honestly I'm not the smartest tool in the shed. I can't do this. I don't even understand what I'm doing. Nothing excites me anymore, nothing makes my heart beat. The things I loved doing once upon a time, I find them tiresome. The things I was good at, I suck at them now. I have no motivation to do better and I sleep all the time. I can't focus for more than 10 minutes. When things get tough, I give up and take a nap instead of powering through and I never look back again until its too late. My basics are pretty weak too. Recently I got a question from a first year that I couldn't solve. I'm doing my masters now. I'm so ashamed and embarrassed of myself I wish I could just disappear. Just so no one gets worried, I'm not going to s word. I want to live, but I want to live a better life, its just that I'm the only one who can make my life better and I have no will power or strength to do it. Me ? A physicist ? Yeah right. I'm lacking the fundamental discipline to be one, even though it's my dream.

[tiredphysicist]

hey I have a question

did you ever feel like giving up on physics? Like I got into astrophysics because I watched Cosmos when I was 9 and now years later it seems the closer I get to having to plan for uni the more I start losing hope in physics. It's like seeing a huge fancy delicious cake and wanting to make it but when you're learning to get at that level you start giving up......

Honestly? I have. Multiple times. Physics is hard, and so are other STEM subjects. Sometimes it will take days, if not months to wrap your head around a concept. Some people will appear to grasp everything quickly and that can be super discouraging but we just have to learn to not compare and focus on our own goals. Perseverance is so important. It was really hard for me to develop this trait. Also, Physics tends to be math intensive of course so if you don't enjoy that then the learning process can become unbearable. However, if you do enjoy that then go for it ! Personally, I'm not good at math at all. I just have a fondness for learning it which is good enough! If you really love what you do it will be okay. Trust yourself and go for it ! If you're unsure, try to look at the course material/recommended books from the course in the website of the uni you're interested in, and try reading it. It may help you decide if you enjoy it. All the best !

[tiredphysicist]

Radio Astronomy

So I learnt something really cool today. Radio astronomy. Radio astronomy is done at ~ 1.4 GHz frequency. WHY YOU ASK??? Because hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe!!! And hydrogen atoms have one electron !! Electrons possess spins!! Spins can flip!! And when they do, they emit a wavelength of 21 cm!! Which corresponds to a frequency of 1.4 GHz (f = c/λ). And since hydrogen is basically EVERYWHERE, they use that to observe celestial bodies and it is a very protected frequency which means radio stations, satellites and cellphone towers can't use it!!

[messy-does-cosmology]

This is true for within our galaxy, but radio emission from extragalactic sources is dominated by synchrotron emission under 30GHz, so the vast majority of radio emission actually comes from cosmic rays in those galaxies. These cosmic rays are probably accelerated by supernova remnants (this process is not well understood though) for type Ib and type II supernovae, which have massive, short-lived stars as progenitors, meaning that the 1.4GHz radio can be used as a tracer of star formation in galaxies! And because at 20cm (which is closer to what 1.4GHz corresponds to) the wavelengths of the radio light are long enough to mean that the disc of the galaxy becomes optically thin, theoretically you don't need to correct for obscuration. However, in very dim galaxies (about 1% as bright as the milky way), you see a suppression of the radio compared with star formation, probably because the cosmic rays are able to escape the galaxy relatively easily.

For more info, there's a really great review called "Radio Emission in Normal Galaxies" by J. J. Condon (1992), and it still holds up today. The radio emission from galaxies is super complex and the processes that produce it are not well understood, so it's interesting that in almost all the non-AGN galaxies we see, there's a super close correlation between the radio emission at 1.4GHz and the FIR emission at 60 micrometers.

[tiredphysicist]

@messy-does-cosmology thank you so much for this !

[tiredphysicist]

Hey everybody if you have physics/ astronomy related questions, or anything about studying them at a degree level, my ask is open !!

[tiredphysicist]

Radio Astronomy

So I learnt something really cool today. Radio astronomy. Radio astronomy is done at ~ 1.4 GHz frequency. WHY YOU ASK??? Because hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe!!! And hydrogen atoms have one electron !! Electrons possess spins!! Spins can flip!! And when they do, they emit a wavelength of 21 cm!! Which corresponds to a frequency of 1.4 GHz (f = c/λ). And since hydrogen is basically EVERYWHERE, they use that to observe celestial bodies and it is a very protected frequency which means radio stations, satellites and cellphone towers can't use it!!

[willowsstudyblr]

coffee and chemistry my beloved

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Is it ok to mock teenagers for bad/mediocre writing & artwork?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Good. Then stop disparaging yourself for stuff you created in the past. You were and still are growing.

[imsotiredcanipleasegetabreak]

Twas a trap into good thinking habits!

[staravenger7285]

I’VE BEEN BAMBOOZLED

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

YOU PLAYED YOURSELF, FOOL!!!

[lilycat0112]

how dare you make me respect myself

[truth-spatter]

Self respect is a crime thank you very much

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

In a world that profits on our pain and fear, self-kindness is an inherently radical act

[tiredphysicist]

dam your blog is really nice. i dont use tumblr much but when i do, i try to look for notes, study tips and other productivity stuff. i am pursuing astrophysics in my college as well, hope we can be good friends :)))

how would you rank studying methods?

(i will just give a list of few examples. pomodere, active recall, notes, question banks, past question papers, spaced repetition)

Hi, sorry for the late reply. I'm not online much now because of summer vacation. Hope you're well, it's always nice to meet a fellow astrophysicist online !

I would rank spaced repetition first. Have you heard of the memory retention curve ? It shows that the rate of forgetting becomes slower with each revision such that by your 3rd or 4th time the amount you forget will become negligible. The thing I would rank 2nd is definitely past papers. I find that in a certain topic in Physics there are only so many different questions that can be framed and only so many ways that they can ask it differently. So doing past papers atleast a month before exams helps a lot. Notes are a tool for revision not a method of revision in my opinion so they would go hand in hand with any technique you choose to use.

[tiredphysicist]

hi!! your blog is lovely!! my questions are- what does a typical career path in astrophysics look like? a lot of colleges don't offer astrophysics at that level, so what degrees/courses in physics should one consider so that they can study astrophysics in their masters? which programming languages should i learn now as a high schooler so that i can have a smooth transition in college? how do i know if astrophysics is definitely the path for me, considering i'm not a huge fan of high school physics but i love learning about space and am quite fascinated by the field? i'm sorry if they're too many, have a great day!!

First, thank you so much, this made me so happy !

I wouldn't say there is a "typical" career path because any physics course is quite a flexible degree and comes with a range of jobs you can be qualified for. Perhaps a lecturer, researcher for an institution or a data analyst (not necessarily cosmological data, data analysis can be in business too). I would try to keep an open mind when it comes to career choices tbh.

As for prerequisite courses for a Masters in Astrophysics, I would surely say that you will need a Bachelors in Physics or Maths. Perhaps engineering? I would say any Bachelors degree that offers a strong foundation in Physics and Maths would suffice and that should include electromagnetism, quantum mechanics and calculus at the university-level.

It helps to know python well in terms of programming languages. I think that's the one a lot of people start with. It's also quite widely used to analyse experimental data.

As I always say, astrophysics is physics ! So I guess it would be helpful if you liked physics. And honestly it will be so rewarding if you have a strong foundation in high school physics so don't frown upon it just yet !! If astrophysics is truly where your passion lies then go for it. As long as you're willing to give physics a shot and try your best to do well in physics and math then it shouldn't be an issue ! As a school student, I loved physics but I wasn't really the sharpest tool in the box and I suffered greatly to cope with the maths and physics involved in astrophysics. I was under the misapprehension that I would use telescopes and learn all about supernovae or how mysterious blackholes are. While this is true to a small extent, the facts you learn about space are not so much in "words and sentences" as much as they are in the form of rigorous mathematical derivations and proofs. So I guess you would have to see if this is something you'd enjoy.

Hope this helped a bit and have a nice day !!