I’m coming up to the end of exams now, which marks the midpoint of my undergrad studies, a very concerning fact indeed.

Review in order of completion:

Classical Mechanics:

Four questions, the first two of which were almost direct computation of lagrange’s/hamilton’s equations, with a poisson bracket calculation thrown in.

The third question was the central forces question. As a huge fan of conic sections, I’ve had great pleasure in this style of question. Basically everything can be solved in terms of pure geometry, which adds a Gallilean touch to solutions that I take pride in. One question involved the limiting speed of an object ejected from orbit, which has a very fun solution where you take the path of the object to lie on the hyperbolic asymptotes!!! Phenomenal stuff.

The fourth question is the moment of inertia question. Unfortunately we study this topic just enough to grind away computing inertia tensors and principal axes, but not enough to do much else. This may prove to be my best exam this term, all going well.

Integration:

Integrals are somewhat infinitely interesting, in that you can always learn more, interesting things about solving (or “solving”) them.

If it only it were so that this class was infinitely interesting.

The exam was a few integrals and a few questions asking you implicitly to do integrals, none of which had anything going for them.

That being said, I did manage to mess up a question, where I didn’t quite do what they asked me to (Feynman technique step 1: read the question.); in doing so I probably brought my grade down from 98 to 88. A good score but an embarrasing slip.

Abstract Algebra:

Easily a top 2 class this term, abstract algebra wins the prize for most hours taken from me.

The exam was extremely varied, with every kind of question we study on it. Safe to say this was seriously stressful to finish in time (although i failed to complete a proof!).

This paper had the best question of year 2 exams on it. We were given a binary operation between real polynomials of degree at most two, and we had to show that this was an inner product space. Where it gets interesting is that we were then asked to apply the Gram-Schmidt process to produce an orthonormal basis of this space. I love that, although I strugled with it for a bit. I can’t help but feel like this kind of thing is incredibly powerful.

Abstract algebra may be the single biggest upper hand I’ve been given for physics to come. All of a sudden I’m seeing eigenvector relations in all my classes.

Electricity and Magnetism:

woof!

I did this exam this morning and, again, it really stressed me out to do. It was easily much tougher than previous papers, and involved writing interpretations (soppy stuff that should be reserved for the pub). I suffered greatly in this exam due to mistranscription of co-ordinates, a blunder I often make.

This subject was quite fun, especially once I realised that it was just vector calculus. (like how special relativity is just group theory!).

Not done yet!

I still have to do multivariable calculus and waves & vibrations, two non-trivial classes. Multivariable calculus is in the morning but the library is closed so I’ve made the time to sit down and re-re-re-rewatch Up On Poppy Hill.