kryptonsa36

It's definitely a case-by-case scenario. See if you can get the opinions of a Course 8 major and why he/she decided to (not) pass 8.01/8.02/both and why he/she thought that was the right/wrong thing to do.

diffy q

8.01 isn't used a lot? I figured it emphasized the basic problem solving techniques that'd be used in future course 8 classes... I want to take 8.01(2?) but pass out of 8.02 because I thought 8.02 was less important (and my mechanics foundations are really weak...) and I'm a potential course 8er.

CalAlum

The Undergraduate Women in Physics group at MIT has created a webpage for physics majors called "advice". This includes discussion of opinions about classes to take: Undergraduate Women in Physics - Advice.

frutiaspice

I 5'd both physics test too and am thinking about majoring in either course 7 or 20.

So how much physics would course 20 require? Should I take the ASE to get out of 8.02?

pebbles

no major requires much physics except physics.

I mean, chem will have your basic quantum chem course, and mechanical engineering will harp on newtonian mechanics until your face melts (to the point of making 8.01 obsolete), and electrical is going to require the basic 8.02 knowledge, but in terms of physics, there's no major that isn't going to teach you all the physics you need for it, in the form of its own little intro courses.

If you're talking course 8 major, 8.02 comes up in later courses far more than 8.01. Even the 8.01 way of using physical intuition to solve problems kinda becomes irrelevant when the quantum sequence starts. It's cause 8.01 isn't really a theory, and almost all of its physical laws have been either disproven or, rather, recast, in more revealing forms, which... you'll be told to appreciate :P

kryptonsa36

Few Course 20 classes rely on 8.02 as a pre-req, if you want to use that as an indication.

PiperXP

You need to finish 8.02 by first semester sophomore year to be Course 20 - but you don't need to complete additional physics =D.

rxhu123

Can you explain to me what is the advandage to get sophomore standing ? I am asking the question for my son. Can you graduate in three years ?

molliebatmit

Indeed you can (though I don't believe many people do).

Probably the main advantages to sophomore standing are that students can declare their major a semester early (and therefore get a faculty advisor in their chosen department) and that students can take more than the 57 units freshmen are allowed to take second semester.

kryptonsa36

Graduating in three years isn't permitted or "more possible" just because you take sophomore standing. Those who can graduate in three years, for the most part, can graduate in three years whether or not they take sophomore standing. Those who can graduate in three years are just more likely to have been offered sophomore standing because they are ahead in their classes.

Mollie got the advantages right, though in addition to getting a faculty advisor, you also start receiving notices from your department about activities, events, internship opportunities, etc. and are basically formally integrated into your community of fellow Course [insert #] majors sooner.

Incidentally, neither my freshman advisor nor my faculty advisor thought the credit limitlessness that comes with sophomore standing should play any major role in deciding whether or not to take up the offer.

PiperXP

Disadvantages: You no longer have "No Record". I know people who turned down sophomore standing because they didn't want to lose that =D.

iostream

i have seen the opposite: most of those who elected sophomore standing, myself included, did it primarily to break the credit limit. i have no intention of graduating early. i just wanted to take more classes

iostream

wait, what? um...

first, the quantum sequence here, like most undergraduate quantum sequences, constructs quantum mechanics from classical mechanics via second quantization. hamiltonians aren't just functional operators, y'know. even more exotic quantization schemes fundamentally rely on this intuition (some, such as the path integral formulation, rely on classical mechanics even more than second quantization).

second, the connection is even deeper in other fields of modern physics. for example, the einstein-hilbert action (i repeat, ACTION) is a crown jewel of general relativity, and astrophysics is almost completely reliant on classical mechanics for their models (globular clusters = boltzmann gas, anyone?). further examples abound.

if anything, 8.01 ideas are much more important than 8.02 in the grand scheme of things. i've always thought of electromagnetism as just being an extension of classical mechanics with a few subtle twists. most dramatic way of seeing this: after you define the electromagnetic stress-energy tensor, describing electromagnetism can be done entirely by means of classical mechanics.

my advice to original poster: i'm usually an advocate of going full speed ahead as fast as you can (i started with 8.05 and 8.06 as a freshman, i'm taking junior lab as a sophomore, etc.), but if you don't know mechanics well, that is a show-stopper. seriously: if you do not feel comfortable with classical mechanics, you will have huuuuuge problems later on as a physics major. think twice before skipping out on 8.012. it's a great class, and along with 8.09, it will form the foundation of your physics knowledge, and help you begin to build the ever-elusive, but oh-so-crucial sense of "physical intuition."

kryptonsa36

Note I didn't say why students choose to take sophomore standing but rather what advisors say shouldn't be such an influential consideration. Of course a majority of students take sophomore standing for the removed credit limit. But a majority of (good, in my opinion) advisors also bring up that trying to exceed the credit limit isn't advisable for any freshman (though, of course, there is the occasional student who can handle a larger workload) and, as such, shouldn't be the goal when considering whether to accept a sophomore standing offer.

Then, of course, students don't listen.

pebbles

iostream-

Look, we're not arguing about anything here except the way we choose to give advice. Your advice is full of hamiltonians and hilbert spaces and noninteracting electron clouds, so it appeals to a certain sensibility, and mine tends to try to be as practical for the average MIT student as possible. Which is why I specifically said "8.01" as opposed to "classical mechanics" in my original response. I'm not here to postulate about the interconnectedness and interdependence of the various fields of physics, this is a complicated time-dependent problem that I am loathe to tackle. Here, I hope merely to advise a freshman on the usefulness of of a particular class. And come on, let's be frank. You learn nothing about actions or hamiltonians or lagrangians in 8.01 (even in 8.012, they weren't mentioned, and we glossed over tensors and tensor calculus in half of one lecture -lol). Naturally, I agree that classical mechanics, as much as some may scorn it, is the root of physics today, but I don't necessarily think anyone is at a disadvantage in further physics (at MIT) without having -repeated- introductory classical mechanics at the college level if adequate preparation is had in high school. That's for the student to judge him/herself.

8.09 is of course another story. Now, if we were required to take 8.09 equivalent of classical mechanics pre-quantum, that could be useful in gaining a bigger picture understanding of what the hell we're doing. For some reason, I learned 8.022 poorly, I did fine in the class but I went on and forgot everything, and when charged particles in EM fields staged a hostile takeover of 8.06, I didnt feel as comfortable as I ought to have. And that's not to mention the 3/4 a semester we spent in 8.05 talking about the spin of the electron and the magnetic moment generated interaction with various internal and external fields. In 8.04 and 8.044, Curie's law comes up more than once or twice, and since 8.022 my year did not even touch on magnetization, there was a lot of resulting confusion and self-learning in those classes.

It could just be that I learned 8.012 material far more solidly than I learned 8.022 material, and therefore I did not notice as much when 8.01 came up, as it was second nature or something to me. Regardless, I figure my own experience is a good prototype for the physics sequence here- since I had no prior physics background from high school to entangle with what I've learned at MIT; and since I have taken all the intro classes, there's no guess work on my part as to what the syllabus contains.

But there's no point in going on. Clearly the moral of the story is having a strong background in physics is important for further study at MIT and moreoever that talking about physics makes pebbles and iostream feel very important. Personally, I dont care how you go about attaining this recommended background, I don't think iostream does either. So yeah, we're on the same side here, iostream. We were even in the same classes.