Semester 4-2 is about to begin. As I am a dualite, I will need to do two theses, both of which will be completed in my 5th year. This means that this semester will be my last semester of study of my BITS college life. How do I feel? Nostalgic? Sad? Anxious? Naaaah! Kinda excited to be honest, given I am so close to an entire year of just research and no exams! :D

Semester 4-1 went well. However, I am not entirely satisfied. The main reason for my frustration is the Statistical Mechanics course. I didn’t like the way the course was conducted. Firstly, I feel we weren’t taught the necessary things and there was a lot of focus on solving problems, even to the extent where I felt that to the instructor it was more important that we could solve things than knowing exactly what we are solving and why we are solving it that way! One merit of exams is that, even though you have a certain set of formulae, if the questions are devised wisely, you wouldn’t know exactly what formula/theory to apply where unless you are well-versed with why a certain formula/theory works at a certain place and doesn’t at another place. That is what I felt lacked in the Statistical Mechanics course. I knew what formula to apply either because we studied it recently or because the values given in the question could only be fit well in that formula. I realize that I shouldn’t put the blame on the instructor; my dissatisfaction might be a result of my own deficiency. Either way, I am unhappy about my knowledge in statistical mechanics. I feel that it is a bedrock in physics, one of the fundamental subjects. So, in my leisure time, I will try my best to get a better understanding of the subject. For the same, I plan to go through David Tong’s lecture notes on statistical mechanics. I only seldom referred to them during the course, but whenever I did I found them to be extremely helpful.

Another course I did in the last semester was Quantum Mechanics II, where we discussed symmetries, time-independent and time-dependent perturbation theories and scattering theory. To be honest, I felt that the course was easier than what I had heard. It involved the application of some basic principles in different conditions. The maths was involved in some cases, sure, but nothing was conceptually difficult, which I have come to notice is the case with all the physics courses I have studied till now. However, it was fun to learn all the mathematical techniques used by physicists to solve not-so-ideal problems. I remember a chemical faculty of mine dissing physicists in one of his classes saying that the physicists work in ideal conditions and far from the ‘real world problems’. Well, I guess he hasn’t heard of perturbation theory! ;)

I should really talk about my favourite course this semester, albeit the most demanding one as well: computational physics. Why was this my favourite course? Because of the instructor, Dr Toby Joseph. What a guy! He conducted the course so fluently: discussing the theory part in an elaborate manner, without jumping over things, and giving personal attention to each and every student during the labs. I remember during one of the labs he was down with cold, still, he sat with me for about 15 minutes helping me debug my code. I hope I can become even half the teacher he is. What I liked about the course was that it did not just focus on how to implement certain computational techniques, which is what I expected it will do, instead, it also involved learning about why these techniques work in the first place. This was a surprise, a welcomed one for sure.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t tell you about my Study Oriented Project under Prof. Gaurav Dar. Boy, this was a ride! My project was intended to be on Chaos Theory, understanding the physics and the mathematics behind the classical chaos theory and look at the properties of certain known chaotic systems. This project was indeed fun. Well, let me clarify that. The end result of understanding how things work, that was fun. The journey was tedious, but I still am happy that I went through it because the kind of mathematical rigour I was exposed to is exactly the kind of mathematical rigour I have to get used to. By the end of it, I was comfortable with it. Kinda awesome to see yourself grow, isn’t it! However, I haven’t told you about the best part of this project. While continuing this project, I was also working on a problem on the side. This is an open problem called the Collatz Conjecture. Maybe I’ll write a post on it. While many attempts have been made to resolve the conjecture, none of succeeded (to my knowledge), hence, the ‘open’ preceding the ‘problem’. What I was trying to do is to model the conjecture as a projective map and use the analysis techniques we use in nonlinear dynamics to learn more about the conjecture, maybe even solve it. SPOILER ALERT, we didn’t solve it, but some of the graphs I got were really interesting. So, while I am not planning to work on it any further for some time, I am sure that I will pick it up again when I am in a dearth of interesting things to do.

So, a rather eventful semester came to an end. I performed well in the exams too, got a perfect 10. I still get shivers whenever I open the grades window and I see a perfect 10 there. Surreal. However, every time I see it I do also feel like an imposter as if I don’t deserve it. I guess I need to work on my self-confidence. :)