Hello, this is my physics blog.  I decided to start a physics blog so I could blog about physics.  Tautological!  I chose WordPress for my blog so I could use \LaTeX to write equations.  I named my blog “on the seashore” for two reasons: 1) because of the above quote by Sir Isaac Newton, and 2) because I have just completed my physics undergraduate education on one coast, and am about to begin my physics graduate education on another coast.

   For this summer, I will be reviewing some old physics and learning some new physics, to prepare for entrance exams and doing research.  Mostly I will blog notes to myself to sort ideas out and to make sure I’m understanding things.  Here’s a list of topics and books I hope to get through:

Classical Mechanics: I think I will browse through Landau and Lifshitz again to refresh my memory.
Electrodynamics: Griffiths should be fine.
Quantum Mechanics: Sakurai should do the trick here. I should probably learn some of the approximations and scattering that I skipped over during my undergrad.
Statistical Mechanics: The stat mech course at my undergrad school was awful. So I am going to read Bloch’s notes to patch up the damage.
Quantum Field Theory: I have had difficulty finding a QFT text that I like. I started with Zee, which I found interesting but far too unstructured. Next I tried Weinberg, which was too heavy on unconventional math and Weinberg’s own formalisms. I then took a course that used Peskin & Schroeder, which I find light on physical motivation and heavy on phenomenological calculations; it is also lacking in important examples - the complex scalar field is left as an exercise to the reader, and took me quite a few pages to work through!  I like Lahiri & Pal, but unfortunately don’t have my own copy. I do have a copy of Ryder, which will be my text of choice for the summer. I will supplement it with Mark Srednicki’s notes, Griffiths’s Elementary Particles book, Aitchison & Hey, and Maggiore.
General Relativity: I’ll review Carroll’s book and try to tackle Wald.
Cosmology: I’ll review notes from a course on the Cosmic Microwave Background that I took last fall semester. I hope to do research in this area, so I’d better brush up!
Mathematical Physics, etc.: I’m going to make up for my spotty theoretical mathematics background by going through Geroch’s book. I also recently was given a copy of Baez & Muniain, which I like very much and will try to complete! I also got a third of the way through Zwiebach’s string theory book during this past semester, so I will try to finish that up.
Problems: I have copies of Cahn & Nadgorny’s two compilations of physics problems taken from graduate school qualifiers. I should work through some problems, since I haven’t really touched pen and paper in a whole semester!