Motivation Definition and 124 Threads

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Hi all, I am a math undergraduate who studies math solely when I crave dopamine — when I feel a “kiddish,” soaring excitement. As a result, however, I am unable to focus for consistent, long periods of time and thus succeed at research. For this reason, would any of you happen to know if any...

The above two video from numberphile are trying to motivate real analysis (I think?). The latter continues on from the former. Presenter's argument goes kind of like this: He first considers the real number line and talks about measuring distance between numbers 4-3=1 Then he talks about...

Merely studying formalism and theory in quantum mechanics is too dry and demotivating for me. I would appreciate being able to do more practical calculations and realistic applications instead of canned problems. Is there a way to balance this theory and applications? I have thought of doing...

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Personally I don't know exactly why I want to learn programming. I am doing it anyway but my views on life are very dull and bland, I don't have any real interests besides basic human survival instincts which I think are where all my motivations stems from. I am a young adult now but as a kid...

Hello, I'm new here, and really just looking for a community/advice. I'm a physics major at Grand Valley State University, and I studied at the University of North Dakota for two years prior to this. I decided that I wanted to major in physics after a lot of thought, the catch is that I am not a...

In this video the presenter says that motivation comes after starting the process and achieving the goal but when I start the process and I achieve it I get relax and start doing things slowly, maybe i am not able to grasp something in this video. Will i have to gain external motivation on daily...

Hey everyone! I started Astronomy Ph.D at a very good (as good as any top university) university this fall but I'm struggling a lot and it's only been 3 weeks! The problem isn't the amount of stuff that I have to do (I am taking two undergrad classes, one grad class and am being a TA), it's...

How was supersymmetry discovered? 13:00 And what were the original motivations for it? Is there some kind of intuitive way to look at and work with the formulas? For instance, in the theory of differential forms, the scalar product of two 1-forms U and V is *(U ∧ *V) = UiVi. It is useful to...

In addition to sports and exercising, what is proved or widely believed by the field of medicine that we can do to reduce depression, manage emotion or improve motivation?

I'm trying to learn about Abstract Wiener Spaces and Gaussian Measures in a general context. For that I'm reading the paper Abstract Wiener Spaces by Leonard Gross, which seems to be where these things were first presented. Now, I'm having a hard time to grasp the idea/motivation behind the...

This is my motivation letter for the university of Regensburg (Masters). The bad thing is that my grades are above average, not great. And I have little to no research experience due to my BSc school. I avoided useless mumbo-jumbo and flatter so it's going to be short and to the point. I pushed...

I am a physicist wannabe but have come full circle to the realisation that average marks in physics isn't going to cut it in this field. My laziness in my critical thinking and life in general, my focus on marks (which haven't produced marks anyway), and lack of engagement with anything but...

Hi there! A couple years ago, I failed my physics exam taken in upper secondary school (Norway), which has led me to having to retake the subject. I realize that I likely failed due to being lazy and tired of school. But a lot has changed since then, and I really do wish to learn physics. In...

I realize this isn’t really the place to ask for this, but I’ve kind of hit a wall. I came into physics grad school intent on doing theory, and I’ve hit a brick wall in my first semester. I got B’s in Classical mechanics and Quantum mechanics, which looks really bad for trying to get into any...

I’m starting my undergraduate physics degree next semester but I really like to study different fields on my own without any external motivation or obligation related to school. As I want to be a theoretical physicist I think this is something that I really have to be good at, because I imagine...

I just finished reading Walter Isacson's Einstein. I note that Einstein's motivation for Special Relativity was the constant speed of light as shown by Michelson and Morley, and his motivation for General Relativity was the equivalence of gravity and acceleration as experienced, for example, in...

In field theory a typical Lagrangian (density) for a "free (scalar) field" ##\phi(x)## is of the form $$\mathcal{L}=\frac{1}{2}\partial_{\mu}\phi\partial^{\mu}\phi -\frac{1}{2}m^{2}\phi^{2}$$ where ##m## is a parameter that we identify with the mass of the field ##\phi(x)##. My question is...

Hi! I'm a newbie here from Chem Engineering Im trying to build up my motivation back in this major. I don't hate Chem Eng courses, but I DONT FEEL MYSELF IS DEVELOPING IN THIS AREA. * I chose ChemEng in the first place because I was okayy in Sc and Maths subjects BACK THEN in high school...

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Hi everyone. I'm a final year undergraduate physics student, in fact, in my final semester wrapping up courses & my thesis. I had dreamed about getting PhD, becoming a decent physicist and such but...the truth is, I am not even sure if I want to continue going down that path anymore. Here is my...

This paper about Quantum Darwinism https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.5082v1.pdf starts with statement: "The quantum principle of superposition implies that any combination of quantum states is also a legal state. This seems to be in conflict with everyday reality: States we encounter are localized...

I graduated college back in 2015. I did nothing but party and the bare minimum and luckily managed to finish a degree in sociology; I'm good at writing. I was a chemistry major when I first started college, and I had the intention of going to medical school. However, I screwed up big time by...

Hello, PF! I am currently learning Fourier series (and then we'll move on to the Fourier transform) in one of my courses, and I'm having a hard time finding motivation for its uses. Or, in other words, I can't seem to find its usefulness yet. I know one of its uses is to solve the heat...

this question is a repost from math stackexchange because that guy worded the question so perfectly the question i really wanted to ask about cross products. *please see image below* as far i can understand, the formula for the cross product is basically that the idea of a cross product is sort...

What is the main motivation behind the theory of cosmological perturbations? Is it the observational data, observational hints, or perhaps the theory of inflation?

I wonder what really motivated Einstein to formulate his general theory of relativity: a) would be due to the principle of equivalence? b) it would be because after the relativistic formulation of Maxwell's equations, there was only the classical gravitation with the factor 1 / r ^ 2? c) would...

I took a semester of QM as an undergrad engineering major, and I don't recall the motivation for replacing traditional vector notation with bracket notation. Can someone enlighten me? Thank you.

Hey...people.. I have some bad problems with motivation when comes to studing physics... now i will go to my 3rd year but i did not pass all my exams form the 1st and 2nd year.. The main problem is that i do not study at all.. I do not know why?? everything is better than studing for me... I...

Reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_cardinal_properties I perfectly understand the motivation for the inaccessible cardinal, it looks very natural from the theory of ordinals, but everything beyond makes no sense to me. Why Mahlo? Why superstrong? It looks like a game...

I've read that one of the primary motivations for the need for QFT is that quantum mechanics cannot account for particle creation/annihilation, however special relativity "predicts" that such phenomena are possible (clearly they have been observed experimentally, but I'm going for a heuristic...

Is the motivation for the action principle purely from empirical evidence, or theoretical arguments, or a mixture of the two? As I understand it, there was some empirical evidence from Fermat's observations in optics, i.e. that light follows the path of least time, notions of virtual work and...

I recently had someone ask me why we use 4-vectors in special relativity and what is the motivation for introducing them in the first place. This is the response I gave: From Einstein's postulates( i.e. 1. the principle of relativity - the laws of physics are identical (invariant) in all...

I know how to implement Lagrangian mechanics at a mathematical level and also know that it follows the approach of calculus of variations (i.e. optimisation of functionals, finding their stationary values etc.), however, I'm unsure whether I've grasped the physical intuition behind the...

What exactly are the theoretical motivations for considering space and time as a four dimensional continuum? Is it a natural consequence of requiring that the speed of light is independent of the frame of reference that it is measured in, since this implies that time and time are not absolute...

I'm 6 months into a PhD (admittedly in Chemical Engineering, not physics, but my project has a modelling bent) and, as the title suggests, I've been struggling to find motivation day in and day out. It's silly: give me an interesting problem in a project not related to my work (say a math...

I'm looking for good examples of physical motivation for integrals over scalar field. Here is an example I've found: If you want to know the final temperature of an object that travels through a medium described with a temperature field then you'll need a line integral It appears to me that...

Hello, I will be applying to Utrecht University soon and I would like some constructive criticism of my letter of motivation. It is not complete and i am still working on it but i would like some feedback. Here are the questions i have to answer: Which subjects and subject areas are you most...

Hello everyone, So my university opened some Summer Research Opportunities for Undergraduates and part of the application requires a motivation letter. Here is what I wrote, I'm open to any suggestions or improvements, Thanks in advance!Respected Sir/Madam, I was very excited when I learned...

I am seeing in "slow motion" the development of vectorial system. I am reading the book "A History of Vector Analysis" (by Michael J.Crowe); it seems from my acquaintance that the vector concept came from the quaternions concept; and the quaternions concept came from the act of search for...

Hello. I am a physics student and recently I have not done so well. This is one of those times when even your best effort isn't enough. I have had those before and have come through, I know I can, I just don't believe it right now,. And I really love this dang, I really do, that's why I am so...

Recently I have been contacting profs from different research groups about the possibility to work my PhD research in their group. Again, the e-mail I have sent to them only asked if there are open positions in their research group as well as asking for a brief description of the position. I...

Is there a way to motivate the sinus and cosinus functions by looking at their Taylor expansion? Or equivalently, is there a way to see that complex numbers adds their angles when multiplied without knowledge of sin and cos?

I've been struggling to find my own motivation for studying and researching physics, so I wanted to pose this question to anyone willing to answer. What is your motivation/drive/ambition to study physics? What do you hope to accomplish with a career in physics? And finally, was there a moment...

Hi, I have just finished writing my motivation letter and I would be glad if you could check it. Please, make your correction, comments, advice. I want to make my letter good as much as possible! Thank you! Motivation letter: I am writing to apply for PhD program “…” at the … Institute. My...

I'm a first year physics major, and I feel like I'm hitting a wall in physics. I have been doing well in physics so far, even though I have been studying more and more and I just feel like I am hitting a wall and not learning anything. Even though I still like physics a lot, I'm losing the...

If we have a standard function like x or x^2 defined between 0 and pi. Then why should we be interested in extending this function to give a Fourier series which resembles this function between 0 and pi? What is the whole purpose of this process? Does it have any real life application or is it...

As we can not meaningfully compare a vector at 2 points acted upon by this operator , because it does not take into account the change due to the coordinate system constantly changing, I conclude that the elementary differential operator must describe a change with respect to space-time, How do...

Hello all, new poster here. I don't want to sound like I'm ranting but I feel like I have no one else to tell. Studying physics has been my life dream since about a year and a half ago. After a long and hard journey (college would not let me take further maths), I finally made it into a...