In case you were wondering how I got this way...
The tail-end of a conversation with my Dad last night:
[A discussion of scary-sounding nonlinear dynamical techniques my Dad has been studying, with Poincaré's name attached for extra scariness]
Me: Sounds interesting. Have you come across the idea of considering the Poisson bracket as a symplectic form on the cotangent bundle of phase space?*
Dad: No, I don't think so...
Me: Something like that, anyway. I went to enough lectures on this stuff to pick up the jargon, but not enough to really get my head around it.
Dad: Yes, I know that feeling.
Me: But it's interesting how quickly physics becomes geometrical, isn't it?
Dad: Yes, certainly. You know, one of these days you and I should put our heads together and try to properly understand General Relativity.
Me: Actually, that was my plan for after I hand in my thesis. That, and learning to ride a unicycle.
Dad: [laughs] ...and learn a foreign language and a musical instrument.
Me: thinks: I wasn't going to tell him about that bit...
* My office-mate, who does The Physics, tells met that I meant "configuration space" - phase space is the cotangent bundle of configuration space!
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pozorvlak) wrote,
