Meet-up/Study Group for Advanced Math & Physics

beerfan

Hi everyone,

For a while now I've been interested in setting up a meet-up or informal study group to study advanced mathematics and theoretical physics.

I'm a software engineer by profession, but my undergraduate degree is in physics. I have a strong interest in learning advanced mathematics & physics out of pure interest; it's the most exciting and groundbreaking area of human inquiry there is . It would also help to prepare for further postgraduate study down the line some day.

This is really a shot in the dark to gauge if there is any interest from like-minded individuals out there. I have no concrete ideas of the form such a group would take, but I would expect it to meet in Dublin City Center for an hour or two on evenings. I've considered meetup.com but not sure if it fits at this stage. From searching nothing else like this seems to exist around Dublin, so I'm not expecting a huge response

Please be aware that I am referring to advanced mathematics here: undergraduate & postgraduate level. I would guess that interested participants would probably have 3rd level degrees in scientific/engineering/mathematical disciplines or similar. As an example text, I have recently started studying "Mathematics for Physics" by Stone & Goldbart (Cambridge publishing).

If anyone is interest do get in touch! Thanks!

@mods - after posting I see that this forum is a little quite. If you think there is a better place for this post, please do move it. Thanks.

TheBody

Nice idea, and I wish you well getting it up and going.

Unfortunately, Dublin is too far away from me to join!

Bit cynical

Something that might be interesting would be studying the Leonard Susskind series of lectures on physics. These appear to go a fair beyond undergraduate level physics.

http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses

He covers the basic maths as he goes along.

A group could meet up and review these and help each other with any problems arising. I've watched a couple of courses of lectures, but felt a lack others to share with and bounce ideas off. Personally, I've no real interest in doing more exams but would like to know more physics at this level.

Something to consider in the future perhaps?

TheBody

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:D:D:D

laowai

I would be interested and I have another friend who would most likely be interested himself.

I'm doing the part-time Maths degree in DIT at the moment and would be interested in doing some more on the side. My friend was looking into Open University physics courses just the other day.

I'm a software engineer and he's a computer engineer.

Do you have particular areas of interested that you would like to study?

laowai

I can't post a link but if you google "effective study groups", there's a pdf by Duke university called How to Form a Successful Study Group.
It gives pretty solid guidelines and a template to follow.

Perhaps its a bit hardcore but I don't see why some motivated hobbyists cannot get somewhere near the mark.

I spoke to my friend and he is "totally up for this".

I had a look at the book you mentioned and I'd be a little concerned that the level at which you want to begin is too advanced. My physics knowledge is limited to a year of mathematical physics in my first year of college 7 years ago. That said, I have a degree in CS and I'm doing another in maths now so maybe with a bit of time I could reach a passable competence.