I was thinking about stuff to write today. I know that most of you are probably like "oh god I have to pretend I actually read this blog AGAIN to placate the crazy person" but...
...that sentence was supposed to go somewhere but it didn't.
Anyway, I was planning a paragraph or two about how physics math is different from math math (qualitatively, of course, because I don't know any real physics math) but then I thought "oh well they're going to come back and be like "yay something to entertain me for 10 minutes" and then see this glorp of stuff about physics (aGAIN) and say "oh well I guess I'm never come here again" and leave.
There would probably be a middle finger in there too. Somewhere.
Fine. If only to appease the little voice in my head that says "PHYSICS!! TALK ABOUT PHYSICS!! DO IT!!"
Today in my mathematical physics class, we learned the first new thing of the year...the last three weeks have been delving deeper into things we already knew. Which is good for a class where we have to have that stuff in the front of our brains constantly, but I sit there saying "I should know this" and I don't, then I feel stupid and I go careening into the Maw of Self-Doubt. Then we get to new stuff, and somehow new stuff works in my brain better or something because my neurons go into Sponge Mode and I take notes like a madman, staring at the space between the blackboard and infinity and absorbing the Knowledge of Generations and...
...I've been sidetracked again.
In any case. While we were talking, I noticed an interesting schism between Mathematical Proof and a physicist's version of a mathematical proof, which real mathematicians spit at (and curb stomp) and constantly make jokes about. A large part of this difference has to do with the fact that when a physicist proves something, they have only to check the numbers again to say "oh hey this theory works PERFECTLY!" and they're done. Mathematicians, who deal with things far more abstract than
So a physicist's proof goes like this: "Oh hey I wonder if I can do such-and-what a thing to this here equation doodlybob and make it come out the way I want!"
There are three outcomes:
- It works, numbers are checked, physicist wins Nobel Prize
- It works, but numbers disagree, physicist wipes tear from eye and moves on
- Things get progressively uglier and uglier, and then eventually the physicist exhausts his all his knowledge and in a fit of desperation releases his idea into the world to see if anyone else can get it to go anywhere.
There is a fourth possibility of letting a mathematician try his hand at it, but that usually ends in the fetal position clutching a crumpled paper with "YOU SUCK" scrawled across it in red Sharpie.
Mathematicians have it the hard way: since they don't have the luxury of looking out the window and saying "Oh, I guess five dimensional vector spaces CAN be made into an orthonormal set of bases!" (Note to mathematicians reading this: I know that made no sense. Ssh.) They have to step very carefully, knowing that if they try to make even one assertion that is not already firmly grounded in Mathematical Canon their entire paper will be rejected.
An analogy: math is to the Pyramids of Giza what physics is to a straw sculpture held together by chewed gum, shoe polish (you don't want to know how that works), and barely-concealed prayer. But they do both stand. Plus if one of the basic tenets of physics turns out to be wrong, it's easy to just fashion a new piece and shove it in there to hold the whole business up. In math I suspect that wouldn't be very easy.
Of course you won't catch a mathematician admitting that a piece of their Shiny Math Castle is anything less than perfect.
Also mathematicians don't have the large hadron collider. So there's that.
