Advice to the Student



Learning is an active process. Simply memorizing accomplishes practically nothing. Treat the subject matter of this course, as though you were trying to discover it yourself, using the text and lectures merely as a guide that you should leave behind. The task of science is to learn ways of thinking which are effective in describing and predicting the behavior of the observed world. The only method of learning new ways of thinking is to practice thinking. Try to strive for insight, to find new relationships and simplicity where formerly you saw none. Above all, do not simply memorize formulas; learn modes of reasoning! The only relations worth remembering are those listed at the end of the chapters of most textbooks. If these are not sufficient to allow you to reconstruct in your head any other significant formula in a short time, you have not understood the subject matter!

Finally, it is much more important to master a few fundamental concepts than to acquire a vast amount of miscellaneous formulas. If during the lectures we seem to belabor excessively some simple examples, such as a system of spins or an ideal gas, this is deliberate. It is particularly true in our subject that some apparently innocent statements are found to lead to remarkable conclusions of unexpected generality. Conversely, it is also frequent that many problems can easily lead one into conceptual paradoxes or seemingly hopeless calculations; in these cases, a consideration of simple examples often resolves the conceptual difficulties and suggest new calculational procedures or approximations. Hence, my last piece of advice to you is that you try to understand simple basic ideas well and that you then proceed to work out many problems, both in the assignments and wherever else you may find them!

Important Notice: For each hour of theoretical lecture you need at least two hours of independent study, i.e., a minimum of eight hours a week in the case of FI001. But you should not take that as a limit. I encourage you to become obsessed with the subject and spend every waking hour studying it. Go berserk! Skip meals, lose sleep, neglect friends and social engagements etc. Virtually every major scientific contribution of any significance was achieved under such conditions.