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Hardest area of Physics

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QFT by a mile. 'Normal' quantum I found relatively easy, but I struggled much more with the more advanced parts of the QFT courses I took, particularly with gauge field theories and renormalisation.

I guess I found GR hard to begin with, but once I got used to using tensors regularly it actually became relatively simple, at least calculating wise, thinking what's physically going on is more demanding.

Reply 21

Supermerp

Original post by TableChair

QFT by a mile. 'Normal' quantum I found relatively easy, but I struggled much more with the more advanced parts of the QFT courses I took, particularly with gauge field theories and renormalisation.

I don't know which courses you took but renormalisation makes a hell of a lot more sense from the condensed matter perspective (which goes in the opposite direction to HEP). I think that viewpoint is the one that lots of HEP people use now (it's sometimes called Wilsonian). Although I can't remember what it says, I remember the clearest explanation I've seen of renormalization in HEP being in Zee's QFT in a nutshell book.

Any part of physics is hard if you push far enough. Otherwise everything would be completely understood.

Reply 22

Nichrome

I find quantum mechanics relatively easy, though I've avoided QFT so far :tongue:

. For me the hardest area is analytical dynamics, always found that pretty tricky. I also found classical optics pretty horrid, though I do enjoy quantum optics so there you go :s-smilie:

Reply 23

Krov

Magnetohydrodynamics is the hardest area of physics. When a subject is so hardcore it intimidates Nobel laureates, you know it's rough.
But then, it's unknown in mainstream courses because Professors don't feel confident teaching it.

Quantum physics is basically philosophy, so lol @ difficulty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics

Magnethydrodynamic aerodyne as studied by Professor Jean-Pierre Petit and Andreï Sakharov is particularly interesting.

Reply 24

TableChair

Original post by Supermerp

I took the two courses by the maths department (although not to exam), and the gauge field theory option. I also took QCMFT and 'Phase transisitions and collective phenomena' which involved Wilsons momentum shell renormalisation group, and it took me quite a while to understand, although I think not attending any lectures didn't help. However I did find it much easier than the stuff in the AQFT course, I got pretty lost in places in that course, and am very glad I didn't do the exam in it.

I tended to use the book by peskin and schroeder, just because it was so complete.
Presumably you're a phd student in TCM?

Reply 25

py0alb

I'm not sure I ever found much of it that difficult, but I went the CM route and only took an reasonably basic course in QFT.

I found lots of it kinda boring though, particularly electromagnetism and experimental optics, learning about waveguides and **** ing interferometers.