Total nerd-out

I was supposed to be doing quantum in the library, but I accidentally picked up a book on mathematical physics and read it for an hour. Then a couple days later I was daydreaming about how I would lecture on vectors to my summer camp kids, and I suddenly got extremely nervous about something. As in, I had a total crisis of faith about the rigor of our mathematical description of the physical universe, which led me to start this post on the physics forums. I really hope someone answers so I can sleep in peace again.

As for the rest of life, well, it's going.

Update Chunk / Mostly Ranting

Here's something I wrote about KELROF for the Tech
Also my photos
and Mike's Photos

KELROF was amazing. Everything fell into place perfectly. I couldn't have imagined a better series of performances from our guys, or a cooler bunch of people to suffer with.

Now that it's over, I'm having a hard time training seriously. School is just kicking my butt. I've gotten out there and run easy a few times, but I don't have the mental energy to divide between hard, consistent studying and trying to focus on three straight weeks of sharpening/peaking. The stress of trying to graduate just doesn't go well with peak athletic performance. So I'm not worrying about it. I'm putting Jim Bush on ice. I'm a slow-heat kind of guy at that meet, anyway. I still want to run, but there are priorities.

On the one hand, I know that really all I need to do is just turn in anything. I really doubt the profs will make me stay another year. But relying on that pity-pass phenomenon is too fitting an end to my entire Caltech education. When I look back at it, I actually have learned an awful lot of physics. When I'm presented with a problem in the real world, I have some idea how to understand it to order of magnitude right off the bat, and know the general idea behind how I would start researching it if I wanted to do a good job. It's the morass of details and technicalities that fill up the problem sets that I'm pissed off about. The problem is the profs need some way to differentiate the students, so they choose problems not for their instructive value or the physical insight they grant, and not for their innate interest or applicability to physical research, but for their technical difficulty. If you know everything forwards and backwards, you shoot through those details to the heart of the problem. If you know everything forwards only and not backwards, you can wade through. Finally, if you know everything in outline but don't really know it forwards, you can say a thing or two about the problem but can't really solve it. Right now, I know the E&M stuff forwards but not backwards, and the QM stuff in vague outline. Still, vague outline is a significant improvement.

It seems there's three or four physics majors (out of twenty) in each class who can actually handle Caltech. They come in two types - brilliant (future eminent physicists) and extremely hard-working (future competent physicists). The rest are sort of getting dragged along for the ride, giving answers that satisfy the professors and TA's, picking up a bit of stuff here and there, but mostly it's a process of being tethered behind a fast-moving vehicle and just fighting the keep your legs underneath you as it pulls you along.

I frequently find myself distracted from the "advanced undergraduate" studies, and going back on a whim to examine the basic stuff (i.e. what if we define the natural logarithm by *this* property instead of *that* one, now how do you show the two are equivalent?, or, how do we justify this theorem we always use on the commutativity of partial derivatives?, or, is it just coincidence that the cross product can be written as a determinant, and how does this generalize to higher dimensions?, or, how can I derive the vector derivatives in curvilinear coordinates based solely on their physical interpretations?, etc). I know all that stuff forwards, and over the past year I've been learning bit by bit of it backwards as well. This is an enjoyable process for me. When you understand something in a superficial way, it becomes a bit of knowledge stored on a shelf somewhere in your brain, hopefully in a prominent-enough location that you can pull it down when someone asks you to. But when you understand something in four or five different ways, you get the entire picture. It comes down off the shelf and gets incorporated into you. It fits in neatly with all the rest of your knowledge. You can wield it like a tool that's become an extension of your body. But instead of violin bow extending your hand and arm, it's Fourier series extending your understanding of physical resonance, or vector calculus extending your understanding of 3-dimensional geometry. I'm not allowed to do that though. There isn't enough leeway, isn't enough time, to go through and master that steps bit by bit so that the more advanced material, when you come to it, grows up naturally as an extension of what you already know, or as a necessary and logical outgrowth in a new direction. Instead, it's frequently a strange, unconnected, and confusing formalism floating out there and demanding to be used on the next set.

I think that the professors, who have been using their mathematical tools as aids to their physical intuition for decades, tend to forget that we're not yet as competent. We can't follow their lucid explanations and clever formulations in real time during lecture, even though we can, with considerable effort, answer their questions correctly on the problem sets. It's like a college orchestra, though it may sound technically proficient, still can't interpret the subtlety in cues from Herbert von Karajan.

So what I want to do is to finish the degree, understanding the best I'm able, and then to explore things on my own terms, and at my own pace. My pace is, unfortunately, not genius pace. But not-genius pace is just fine for someone who delights in the little bits of understanding they chance upon, treasures them one by one, and over time builds an ever-more coherent, ever-more elegant model of reality.

Friday May 9 (60 minutes)

Jogging in prep for KELROF tomorrow, then pre-race dinner at Ian's. It was weird because I was supposed to be "in charge" and "know things". Dammit. I hate when that happens. I need to pass this off to someone else for next year.

Thursday May 8 (speed)

5x500, run as 400 at goal 1500 pace straight into 100m kick at 93% effort, approximately.

20 minute warm-up, then 3x200 cruising to work my way up to speed. Then I started the workout.

I hit 63 for the first 400 on all five repeats, although on numbers 2 and 3 it was a slightly-faster 63 than on numbers 1, 4, 5. The kicks varied a bit. Number one was felt quite strong, although as soon as I started it my legs burned. I was going every 4:00 (300m jog/walk recovery), so recovery time was about double sprinting time. Number two was still a good, quick kick. Three and four were noticeably faster than the 400 that preceded them, but maybe a bit slower than the first two kicks since I was hurting. Number five I made myself kick all-out because I have to learn to do that eventually, and it worked out fine. I didn't feel like I was going super-fast, but I held whatever speed I did work up throughout the entire straightaway.

Afterwards I was pretty toasted. I would have done 4x200, but I felt like I wouldn't be able to run them faster than the pace I had done for the workout, so I just jog/walked three laps of cool down. I did a little core afterwards, but couldn't muster up much effort for it.

I'm happy with the workout. 63 is pretty quick for me, and I was still able to kick off it, completing a total of 2500m worth of work.
Before my 4:03 time trial I did 6x300 in 46 average. This seems superior.

Wednesday May 7 (long)

90 minutes on the south field around the Los Feliz Flyers. Morgan joined me for a bit. I'm getting pumped about KELROF. We've put together a very good group of guys to make a run for it. 5:28 average may or may not be within our power, but at least we'll have a lot of solidarity as we suffer together.
We've got shirts, although they won't arrive until after the event. We have food and athletic trainers and the facilities will be open, so I guess that about covers it. I have three teams entered now, although it'd be nice if a fourth is out there somewhere and simply hasn't made its presence known just yet. I have food and funding based on 60 people, so it'll be a little embarrassing if my yield is only half that.
I felt fine on the run. Six strides near the end. Core plus a little lifting afterwards.

Monday May 5, Tuesday May 6 (midterms)

Didn't run much. Twenty minutes on Monday morning, but that was about it. Got through the quantum midterm, though.

Sunday May 4, 2008 (1500m 4:05.84, 800m 2:02)

Splits something like 66/2:11/3:16/4:05.84
1500 felt very strange. I wasn't at all used to running in a pack. It didn't feel horribly fast. It did feel surprisingly short. I couldn't understand why everybody around me was breathing so hard, or why they seemed so eager to go to this exact spot on the track right now. I stepped on people's heel several times as I moved up a bit, then got stuck. I realized it's very difficult to move when you want. You have to either be content to sit right where you are, or be prepared to spend a lot of energy moving around, at least when the pack is as tight as it was today.

With 500 to go I realized that I ought to get moving because the leader was starting to get a gap on the pack, and I felt good enough to chase. I had to slow down to get clear, then move all the way to lane three, then sprint down the homestretch to get to the front. By the time I did that, I came up on the leader's shoulder with a lot of momentum going, so I just decided to make a move and see what happened. The announcer called my name as I did, and I felt great for about 150 of the last lap. I thought as I started it that I might run close to 60 seconds. But with 200 to go I started hurting badly, and had to focus to keep from falling apart. A few guys inevitably came past again, and I finished in fifth. The winner seemed happy to have had me make the move and keep things interesting, though, and I'll see him again at Jim Bush.

Considering that I hadn't run 1500 in two years, that I have done only a bit of training for it, that I raced the night before and was tired and sore before the race, and that I still hit an official 1500 PR and came close to my ideal-conditions time trial time, I'd say the race was a success. I think that with another month of training and fresh legs I have good chances for a sub-4:00 performance at Oxy.

Matt ran 3:57.01 in the heat ahead of me despite non-optimal splits, so he's in position to go for a qualifier at Oxy next week.

About two and a half hours later I jumped in the NFTC 800m Carnival. Kangway led and I came through in 60. With 300 to go I moved and tried to keep the pace up. I felt myself slowing down, but maybe with someone right there next to me I could have knocked off another second. 2:02. Ian ran a shockingly-fast 2:04, despite very little training for it. Kangway came in around 2:10 and Chief 2:15 or so. A good time trial, for being basically exhausted before it started. Close to my PR of 2:01.84 from summer '06.

Kangway then redeemed himself with a NFTC record of 24.9 in the 200, and egg pizza was enjoyed by all.

Saturday May 3, 2008 (5000m 15:21.11)

PR. Pretty good race. Chris Raub was there on the infield yelling for me. Splits about 4:56, 4:52, 4:56, 36 = 15:21.11
Moves me up to number three on the Caltech all-time list, past Pete Cross (15:21.2).
Probably the worst thing I did was Thursday of this week, after not being able to run due to poison oak, I went a little stir-crazy and did some leg press. I didn't put on a whole lot of weight compared to what I've done in the past (290 compared to 400 lbs), but I probably did more reps, and also wasn't used to it. My legs were sore heading into the race. I don't know what possessed me to make me engage in such frivolty, but what's done is done. At least I had a race that didn't involve a horrible last mile.

It panned out much like the other races I've done this year. I started out all the way in back and moved up past people. I was even passing people as late as the last 800m of this race. I still had no significant kick. This time, though, that was partially due to my having a very strong urge to have a bowel movement right when the bell rang (I had 700 to go, and did not get lapped).

I didn't meet my goal of running faster than the CMS guys at Ben Brown, but I averaged faster than them over the year, anyway. Also, I improved my time just in time and just enough to stay ahead of Arianna Lambie, who ran 15:22 at Stanford on Sunday.

This puts a close on my 5000m season. Earlier in the year I thought I could go under 15:00, but I just didn't put the pieces together to do that. My training was inconsistent and a bit unfocused. My diet and lifestyle haven't been ideal. I'm probably five to eight pounds too heavy, thirty or forty hours behind on sleep over the last month, and three or four good workouts short of where I should have been. But, I guess I learned some things this season as well.
Back at the beginning of it, I essentially felt entitled to the times I expected to run later. It seemed inevitable. But nothing happens just because you think you deserve it. It only happens if you take responsibility to make it. I've chosen to train essentially on my own because I like that independence and wanted that freedom and responsibility. But I have yet to demonstrate that I'm truly competent in training myself. Over the next month I'll be moving on to 1500 training with the goal of breaking 4:00. I want to improve consistently over this month and set the pattern for a career of excellent training and racing.

Friday May 2 (60 minutes)

Pre-race jogging on the north field. Last night my bicycle seat broke. I was just at Matt and Katherine's at the time, so I left the bike there and walked home, it being too dark to accomplish much else. I went back at lunch today and realized that it didn't just come apart (it had been loose for a while). The bolt that holds the seat on had snapped in half. This is not a little joke bolt, either. Probably a good 8mm thick, and it just ripped in two underneath me. I didn't think I had been putting on that much weight taking two or three days off.

Anyway, I ended up doing a lot of walking today, and since I ran eight hours or so after lunch, I was feeling pretty depleted by run time.

For tomorrow I think I can go after one more PR at 5000 this year. My original goal of 15:00 doesn't seem like the smart thing to shoot for, but I know that I can put together a race better than the last two, so I just want to get out there and do it.

Thursday May 1 (60 minutes)

No pus ran down the back of my leg, so it's looks like I'm ready for action again.

From my last EM homework:

my response:
"If the loop were pulled in the z direction, there would be no flux change and so no Faraday induction would occur. However, there would be a Hall effect because..."

the TA just cared about the first part. Underneath my explanation of the Hall effect he wrote:
"Maybe... I'm not sure" then underneath was an additional comment that had been scribbled out. I just now took a closer look to see if I could still read the deleted comment. It was, "but I'll ask the professor".