Linear algebra and Physics

Added 2022-04-07

Problem solving in Physics feels different from in math, there are more degrees of freedom in how you model the problem. It's interesting.


Ok day, spent a lot of time working, but I don't feel like I got much done.

Wasted 40 min on discord in the morning reading some political debate. That was stupid, so I only started work by 10ish instead of 9 (I also got up late bc tired)

Spent 4h studying linear algebra, mostly finished chapters 5 and 6. I plan to finish chapter 7 then move to a new book since the applicability / quality is rapidly decreasing (better to read to chapter 7 and have a good understanding then finish with a crappy understanding).

After that spent 2h 30 min learning physics, I've been putting off physics for a long time, so it's finally time to learn it. Spent most of the time messing with units and getting familiar with potential and kinetic energy. PhysicswithElliot is awesome.

The whole problem-solving strategy in physics is interesting, I feel it has a lot more "degrees of freedom" then solving pure math problems; since you can model the system a different way, come up with a totally different formalism etc. (whereas in math you're working inside an existing formalism). Less abstractly it's cool when you have a bunch of ways to express different stuff (force is the negative rate of change of potential energy...) and you can pick the one most suitable

Wasted 30 min on discord, spent about an hour working on browser automation stuff for someone. I'm getting more and more vanilla JS pilled as I learn more web APIs.

Spent 1h eating dinner and watching clips from parks and recreation (Ron Swanson is my spirit animal), then spent 2h reading a good manga

Tomorrow I've got a social thing, so I probably won't get much focused work done, I'm going to try and do some coding and maybe clean up my website if I have the chance.