…but I think, at least for me personally, that classical electrodynamics/electrostatics is just as bad. Sure quantum has some axioms and results that at first make you say, “Wait, are you serious?” But after a while I think I’ve come to be more comfortable with how quantum problems shape up and how answers should look. Sure I wouldn’t have guessed that Hilbert spaces have anything to do with reality either, but now that I know they do, I find working with them to be pretty nice. Maybe that will change when I take a quantum field theory class.
E&M though…even “simple” problems in electrostatics… I find that I am rarely able to anticipate how answers should look, that is, beyond the simplest symmetry and “it-should-look-like-a-point-charge-from-far-away” arguments. I’ve been trying to expand my horizons beyond Griffiths’ E&M, and to really think hard about it, but it still gives me troubles as I study in preparation for the physics GRE.
electromagnetism], the student must make himself familiar with a
considerable body of most intricate mathematics, the mere retention of
which in the memory materially interferes with further progress …
Effing permanent markers how do they work ?
