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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

Turns out physics is actually really easy once you get rid of all the pesky mathematics!

This is what I kept trying to explain to the freshmen and sophomores I used to tutor. The physics is easy once you learn the conservations: energy flows and transforms, can you see where it goes and add it up?

The math is hard.

Same deal in calculus. Conceptually very easy, you can determine the total by adding up the amount in the slices. Calculus is easy, algebra is hard.

For anyone out there beginning their journey reading this, there is nothing I would recommend more than this: do the work; chew the pencil; become very good at algebra.

Physics is actually still pretty hard without the maths: if you imagine you have a new phenomena (e.g. a whole bunch of seemingly bizarre "elementary" particles a la hadrons before quarks) characterising them in a way that they can be modelled let alone modelling them is very hard.

I agree, but I think we're talking about slightly different things. I was more referring to the judicious division and encapsulation of concepts that we already understand very well.

More science education than science the philosophical pursuit. Which was more the concern of the folks I was tutoring.

I once derived the equation in the Mark's handbook for sizing a drive shaft from first principles for a project, not knowing I could have just looked it up. I can't even imagine being able to do it now. This is what I miss, 30 years post B.S.M.E. as a programmer. I can't do the math any more, because I can't remember the algebra.

It's been 7 years for me and I'm certain I would fail a test in anything past Calc 1 now. I can still remember derivatives, limits, and basic integrals but anything past that would be a wash without going over a textbook first.

Ironically I actually did really well in multivariable calculus in college. I had tremendous trouble focusing on anything I didn't find interesting, but once I recognized that all the computer graphics papers I was reading at the time were all based in multivariable calculus and differential equations I was hooked.

I share this experience. It seems advanced math skills are hard to "mothball" properly. Either you keep using them day-to-day, or you'll will lose them real fast.

The challenge of physics is that the relationship between concept and math reverses as the further you go.

Early on, studying Newtons laws, the concepts are way easier than the math for most people. Inertia, parabolas, friction, angles.. we can see it and use it every day.

But the current state of knowledge is that we can reliably use math to calculate phenomena that seem to have no analog in the familiar concepts that govern our everyday experience. The math of dark matter is fairly straightforward but the concept is so weird that tons of people reject it out of hand (as seen in the comments whenever it comes up on HN).

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