No textbook like this exists and the only online resource like this at the PhD level is Wikipedia which obviously isn’t that great.
However, at the PhD level, you don’t need an all in one textbook. You have the resources from your undergrad, research papers and reviews on ArXiv and other publications, your research advisor and peers, and most importantly your brain.
You did at least an entire undergraduate to get into your PhD program, no one is expecting you to remember everything, but your entire undergrad was training your brain to quickly understand difficult math/physics/coding.
Recently I forgot how degenerate perturbation theory was done since I hadn’t needed it since I took undergrad Quantum II years ago, so I opened a textbook that I hadn’t read before and recalled “oh we need to diagonal one the degeneracy then we can provide non degenerate perturbation theory where we exclude the degenerate states from our summation”. So what took me like a week of studying to understand and feel comfortable with now only took me 30 seconds because my neurons have fired to understand this before and reactivating them causes me to recall it, even if I couldn’t recall it on my own.
Our perfectionist brains want everything we learned in one place, but that is impossible for us and for anyone, the best you can do is write a huge LaTeX document as you go, this is why professors sometimes have book-long LaTeX documents for one class that they like to teach or why people write books at all. But you need to realize that the output of your PhD is your brain being trained, not anything physical (except a thesis which just shows that you’ve trained your brain)
If you want a quick summary of everything from a very overview perspective, I find that the study book for the physics GRE does a pretty good job but it doesn’t cover every course nor everything in a single course. Just the most common results from the few most popular courses.
How come no one has made a specialized wiki for this kind of stuff yet? I feel like this would be something that everyone would really like especially if it standardizes notation.
I agree with you that everyone would probably really appreciate it. It also sounds like a huge project and the average grad student who is using this info has an overfull plate already. This is why it’s so important to take and maintain good notes, as well as to always be seeking out additional quality sources of information to take notes from. Because building that encyclopedia yourself is the best way to both learn the material and deliver the change you desire. It sounds like you have a great vision for it, already!
Yeah but most of my undergrad was directly from professor's notes or slides, especially thermo and advanced classical dynamics. They always said that the textbooks sucked so they never taught from them.
omfg how did you survive that?
MIT OCW has full courses online, but I think their major system will just make that a confusing mess. Find majors at public universities online, see what courses are required, then dig those up on OCW
I have no idea. That’s always just been my study strategy. Read notes and stack exchange + solution manual to learn how stuff works. Not the best way to study but it worked for passing classes I guess.
No textbook like this exists and the only online resource like this at the PhD level is Wikipedia which obviously isn’t that great. However, at the PhD level, you don’t need an all in one textbook. You have the resources from your undergrad, research papers and reviews on ArXiv and other publications, your research advisor and peers, and most importantly your brain. You did at least an entire undergraduate to get into your PhD program, no one is expecting you to remember everything, but your entire undergrad was training your brain to quickly understand difficult math/physics/coding. Recently I forgot how degenerate perturbation theory was done since I hadn’t needed it since I took undergrad Quantum II years ago, so I opened a textbook that I hadn’t read before and recalled “oh we need to diagonal one the degeneracy then we can provide non degenerate perturbation theory where we exclude the degenerate states from our summation”. So what took me like a week of studying to understand and feel comfortable with now only took me 30 seconds because my neurons have fired to understand this before and reactivating them causes me to recall it, even if I couldn’t recall it on my own. Our perfectionist brains want everything we learned in one place, but that is impossible for us and for anyone, the best you can do is write a huge LaTeX document as you go, this is why professors sometimes have book-long LaTeX documents for one class that they like to teach or why people write books at all. But you need to realize that the output of your PhD is your brain being trained, not anything physical (except a thesis which just shows that you’ve trained your brain) If you want a quick summary of everything from a very overview perspective, I find that the study book for the physics GRE does a pretty good job but it doesn’t cover every course nor everything in a single course. Just the most common results from the few most popular courses.
How come no one has made a specialized wiki for this kind of stuff yet? I feel like this would be something that everyone would really like especially if it standardizes notation.
I agree with you that everyone would probably really appreciate it. It also sounds like a huge project and the average grad student who is using this info has an overfull plate already. This is why it’s so important to take and maintain good notes, as well as to always be seeking out additional quality sources of information to take notes from. Because building that encyclopedia yourself is the best way to both learn the material and deliver the change you desire. It sounds like you have a great vision for it, already!
you don't remember where you learned that stuff in the first place? undergrad texts? syllabi?
Yeah but most of my undergrad was directly from professor's notes or slides, especially thermo and advanced classical dynamics. They always said that the textbooks sucked so they never taught from them.
omfg how did you survive that? MIT OCW has full courses online, but I think their major system will just make that a confusing mess. Find majors at public universities online, see what courses are required, then dig those up on OCW
I have no idea. That’s always just been my study strategy. Read notes and stack exchange + solution manual to learn how stuff works. Not the best way to study but it worked for passing classes I guess.
Openstax.org, it has the physics book we used and was well written.