Calling all Oxbridge Physicists!

Hoofbeat

I want to have a go!!!!!!!!!!

Unparseable latex formula:

\DELTA \LAMBDA = \VECTOR{v}.\VECTOR{n} \div \nu

muhahah! to do a delta you need to use \nabla, vector is \vec, fractions are frac{numerator}{denominator}, also you need to be careful with capitals as \lambda is a small lambda and \Lambda is a capital. Also, the normal fontsize is pretty small so I normally put \fontsize{5} at the start. You can download programs to use on your computer for producing full reports as pdfs - I use texniccentre with miktex

Unparseable latex formula:

\fontsize{5}\nabla \lambda = \frac{\vec v.\vec n}{\nu}

edit: shame, you've sorted it now. Your first attempt will be preserved in the quote in my post though :p:

Reply 342

Bezza

I use texniccentre with miktex

that's exactly what I use! Although I'm only first year, I've been sad enough to want to write pretty stuff. I did my Computing write up (I dont know if you're in ox or not, or if you do physics, but that;s what first years do) in LaTeX, at which the marker said "nice presentation."

Reply 343

OP

LennonMcCartney

that's exactly what I use! Although I'm only first year, I've been sad enough to want to write pretty stuff. I did my Computing write up (I dont know if you're in ox or not, or if you do physics, but that;s what first years do) in LaTeX, at which the marker said "nice presentation."

You guys have far too much time on your hands (and yes Bezza's a 1st year at Magdalen)! Although I must admit it's cool!!!!! :p:

Reply 344

LennonMcCartney

that's exactly what I use! Although I'm only first year, I've been sad enough to want to write pretty stuff. I did my Computing write up (I dont know if you're in ox or not, or if you do physics, but that;s what first years do) in LaTeX, at which the marker said "nice presentation."

Yeah, I'm a first year at magdalen as chloé said - I also wrote my computing writeup in latex and 1 of my optics write ups too :biggrin:

I thought it was quite cool how you put in all the details about yourself and the project and then it formats it according to which style you put down.

Reply 345

OP

Bezza

Yeah, I'm a first year at magdalen as chloé said - I also wrote my computing writeup in latex and 1 of my optics write ups too :biggrin:

I thought it was quite cool how you put in all the details about yourself and the project and then it formats it according to which style you put down.

So how did you do your project in Latex? What software do you need? I seem to remember that Phil (K'uin K'ra) did his computing project like that too!

Reply 346

This is from an e-mail to one of my mates with a lot of the friendliness/jokes edited out so it might sound a bit awkward.

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The main purpose of this email is the promise of LaTeX thing. Firstly, a couple of things to help you understand what it all is (a lot of this stuff's on the net). TeX (pronounced "tech" I'm told...) is an electronic typesetting engine designed by some computer science dude in the 80s. But it's apparently very basic. So, some other dudes created a set of macros on TeX, and called it LaTeX ("lay-tech") which has since become the de-facto standard for typesetting mathsy/physicsy stuff. The American Mathematical Society also created AMS-TeX or something, and often the AMS package is used with LaTeX.

LaTeX takes as input a textfile with a .tex extension, and can produce one of 3 kinds of output. A .dvi (device independent) file, .ps (postscript) or .pdf file. Of course, many people have written various other packages that can output to a whole array of outputs, but the above are the most important i think. The input file is written in a kind of markup. e.g. to get an integral in the document, you'd typically write "\int\limits^{5}_{-3} e^{-x^2} dx" or something.

To get your hands on the stuff, you need a windows based TeX distribution. The one I use (and I think this is the most popular windows/up-to-date windows one) is called MikTeX. This page has a link to the download: http://www.miktex.org/setup.html. Download the "basic" version, that's usually more than enough. With this software, it's possible to do the whole LaTeX stuff, but requires working from the command line and stuff, which, let's face it, isn't very nice.

So, you can download a sort of graphical editor, with nice buttons to click to compile the output, and colour coding and other such niceties. This page has the link: http://www.toolscenter.org/front_content.php?idcat=50. And those 2 should do the trick.

Reply 347

I use texniccentre and miktex (though I'm not sure what the miktex bit does, I think it probably gives all the symbols and fonts or something) which you can download off the internet from somewhere. I think I found them recommended in a thread on here so will have a look for that

Reply 348

Bezza

I use texniccentre and miktex (though I'm not sure what the miktex bit does, I think it probably gives all the symbols and fonts or something) which you can download off the internet from somewhere. I think I found them recommended in a thread on here so will have a look for that

MiKTeX does most of the hard work! All the positioning, the layout, the measuring, the fonts, producing the output etc etc, texniccenter is just the GUI that you use to interface with the TeX distribution.

Reply 349

LennonMcCartney

MiKTeX does most of the hard work! All the positioning, the layout, the measuring, the fonts, producing the output etc etc, texniccenter is just the GUI that you use to interface with the TeX distribution.

ok, cool. your post made that clear but I was typing when you put that up!

Hoofbeat, if you do download it and want to try and learn, there are loads of websites around and I've also got a few pdfs that I used if you want me to msn them.

Reply 350

OP

Bezza

Hoofbeat, if you do download it and want to try and learn, there are loads of websites around and I've also got a few pdfs that I used if you want me to msn them.

Cool thanks Nick, I'll probably learn it over the summer or something when I have more time.

Out of interest have any of you got your hands on copies of the exam questions Yeomans has set us to look at before our CP1 Revision Lectures (I doubt you guys have as since you don't usually come to lectures...)? I popped into my college's library to find the exam papers she's got them from but they don't go back far enough and neither do the online ones! Oh well...one less piece of work for me to worry about!

Reply 351

F1 fanatic

16

Hoofbeat

Cool thanks Nick, I'll probably learn it over the summer or something when I have more time.

Out of interest have any of you got your hands on copies of the exam questions Yeomans has set us to look at before our CP1 Revision Lectures (I doubt you guys have as since you don't usually come to lectures...)? I popped into my college's library to find the exam papers she's got them from but they don't go back far enough and neither do the online ones! Oh well...one less piece of work for me to worry about!

They are on the internet:

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/expapers/

Ive got them... am trying to do them.... failing... about to give up :rolleyes:

Hope it helps anyway :smile:

Reply 352

shiny

12

You guys are first years! go out and enjoy yourselves! :eek:

Reply 353

F1 fanatic

16

shiny

You guys are first years! go out and enjoy yourselves! :eek:

This word... "enjoy"... :confused:

what does it mean?? :confused:

Reply 354

Just in case anyone wanted to know, i'm not doing that paper for Yeomans (at least not now anyway).

Reply 355

OP

F1 fanatic

They are on the internet:

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/expapers/

Ive got them... am trying to do them.... failing... about to give up :rolleyes:

Hope it helps anyway :smile:

Thanks! Where did you find that link? I couldn't find them anywhere! I looked on OXAM & also in my library and couldn't find a link on the physic site.

What college you go to out of interest F1 Fanatic...I don't think I've spoken to you before?

Reply 356

F1 fanatic

16

Hoofbeat

Thanks! Where did you find that link? I couldn't find them anywhere! I looked on OXAM & also in my library and couldn't find a link on the physic site.

What college you go to out of interest F1 Fanatic...I don't think I've spoken to you before?

If you go to the physics home page then teaching then examination papers(near the bottom). The Oxford one itself is rubbish :p:

- the physics one is much better - contentwise etc.

And yes we have spoken before. We both did the Boolean Algebra thread for EL03. Im at Keble. I know who you are if you dont know me. I sit in the row in front of you most the time & Ive sat opposite you during practicals. Ill say hi if the opportunity presents itself.

Those Qs are embaressing. I should be able to do them... just having trouble at the moment :biggrin:

Reply 357

OP

F1 fanatic

And yes we have spoken before. We both did the Boolean Algebra thread for EL03. Im at Keble. I know who you are if you dont know me. I sit in the row in front of you most the time & Ive sat opposite you during practicals. Ill say hi if the opportunity presents itself.

Oh yeah sorry! I remember...very bad memory!

Reply 358

Willa

11

*cries* i need help people, my deadline is so close and i just dont feel confident with any of this. I'm trying to calculate the theoretical oscillating frequency of an LCR circuit. I have an inductor capacitor and resistor connected in series in a loop, and i am monitoring the charge on the capacitor.

in this notation q-doubledot = second derivative of q...etc

i obtained the equation: q-doubledot + (R/L)q-dot + 1/LC = 0

can someone confirm to me that the oscillation angular frequency is then given by: root(1/LC - (R/2L)^2)

cheers!

Reply 359