this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Physics

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A community for all things physics!

I'd like to keep the focus here on physics discussion, so please feel free to come with whatever questions, thoughts, and ideas you may have, however grounded or outlandish they may be! I'm also open to allowing physics comics/humor/memes, but I don't necessarily want that to be the main focus.

I'd prefer if we avoided posting pop-sci articles with ridiculous headlines, you know the ones: "New Research Suggests Some Black Holes May Actually be Quantum Tangles in the Fabric of Space-Time"

Please don't post that here. If you're not sure about an article, check if the title contains one or more of the following words: "black hole", "wormhole", or "quantum - something". That's normally a good indication that the article might be garbage.

Finally, I'm just one dude who's in the middle of writing his thesis, so if you're interested in helping moderate this community please let me know!

Remember to follow the usual rules, don't be a dick, etc.

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I was inspired by someone's username and found this video. A video much like this one was one of the things that got me into studying physics to begin with over a decade ago.

The characteristic blue glow is caused by Cherenkov radiation, which is analogous to a sonic boom, but instead of a jet breaking the sound barrier, it's charged particles moving faster than the phase velocity of light in a medium (normally water).

Pretty cool, I think.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wrote out a long reply but it got deleted :( The gist of it was that I think your work is very fascinating, and I want to thank you for sharing your experience with me. I have one last question for you before I leave you alone: How important would you say the topic of your PhD is in getting into the positions that you've held? I have the opportunity to work on some very interesting projects that aren't necessarily related to my career interests, and I soon have to make a decision.

Thank you again for taking the time to filed my questions!

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh bummer :(

Well, don't take my advice as gospel truth. But in my experience when we are hiring post-docs (and doing my own post doc), we are looking for people who can execute a technical project quickly. So they have to have the technical skills to do something but don't have to have the knowledge of the particular material system, which can be filled in with lit research and working with an advisor/supervisor. In my group, I would take a person who knows MD and not radiation damage physics versus someone who does know radiation damage physics but works in experimental characterization, for example. I'm not sure how that translates for chemistry - you may want to ask a few people for the specifics in the field.