Series Introduction (IP 1.1)

I've decided to start a running series of short articles, a way of generating content more regularly alongside my longer pieces. I might expand the number of the series in the future but we'll start with this one.

As in the title the working title is 'Information Processing', I'm going to discuss any science material I've been reading, watching, listening etc. I'll chat about what it covered, how I thought it was delivered and how useful it was to me.

Let's get started with Information Processing 1.1! I'm not back at uni yet so I'm really just warming up ready for the first term.

"What are quarternions, and how do you visualize them? A story of four dimensions." - 3Blue1Brown:

I've been a big fan of 3Blue1Brown for about 6 months now, his focus on visualisation and trying to make mathematics more intuitive suits me, he exhibits a level of detail which many YouTube creators do not. 

This particular video is on a topic that I wasn't familiar with previously, it's part of a short series of videos that should be coming over the next few weeks. Quarternions certainly have applications in physics but for me the more interesting aspect of this video was the focus on stereographic projections and dimensions. These are subjects I'm more familiar with. The example of projecting a 4D hyper-sphere into 3D space is definitely worth a look at for anyone interested in theory. 

As always with 3Blue1Brown, the animations are on point and as a classical music fan the soft piano in the background helps me absorb the material presented. Definitely worth a watch.

Various presentations by Dr Don Lincoln - FermiLab:

The FermiLab channel offers some nice (if short) introductions to topics in particle physics. I used these for a quick conceptual refresher over a couple of days. They are a lecture style presentation with a few basic animations.

I covered a number of topics, QFT, QCD, QED but the Twin Paradox one probably sticks in my mind most. This had better animations and covered it from the point of reference frames, something I only covered in detail this academic year gone. The ones on general particle physics were a good terminology reminder but I found them too low level personally.

Solid explanations, but the presentation can sometimes be a bit slow and cheesy, only sometimes though. Still a good refresher though.

QFT lecture notes - Imperial College London:

For anyone interested these notes are available on the Imperial theory group page, freely available to anyone, on the 'Information for Current Students' section of the masters pages. I've read through the PhD note-takers material for the first few lectures, their handwriting is very good with clear diagrams as well. The material is reasonably introductory and as yet hasn't got me running scared (I stress yet). The QFT course seems to seen as the most introductory and 'basic' course in the first term, it leads on nicely from the advanced classical physics course I took last year.

I'll try and cover more ground before I start the course next month!


That's it for this week, I'll check in next time with a few more entries!