Blog post: pwagen: The Journey Begins

Inspired by this thread, I decided to order the book from which the thread is named. Seeing as I've developed an allergy to maths with letters and fictional characters instead of numbers, I surprised myself with my eagerness to get started with it.

After thinking long and hard about what I had done, I realized there were a few reasons my subconscious logged into Amazon and paid a hefty sum for a book of which I would probably not even finish the summary on the back! Firstly, after joining SFN, I've come to learn a lot of things, and I've found myself actually wanting to learn more about pretty much any topic, even those that were previously uninteresting or scary. So an introductory book on how our universe actually works would be the perfect way to start my journey to the deepest pits of... science.

The second reason is a personal and egotistical one. I've still got two math exams to finish for my degree (in IT). And the way I see it, math and physics have always been intertwined in a lot of ways. So I figured I could hopefully learn the math in the book, not as math, but as physics. And that way, what I learned from the book would spill over into my knowledge of math and I would nail the exams. Now, that hypothesis might be flawed, but there's no harm in trying.

Ripping open the box the book was in revealed something I will have nightmares about for months to come - equations!

After regaining my composure, I started questioning my sanity. I can hardly find the book title between all those equations with funny symbols and weird arrows. But, a challenge is a challenge. And I have only rarely not read a book once I've bought it, and this is not going to be one of those times. I carefully opened it and dug in on the preface. The explanation therein calmed me down a little. It was apparently written for people who are interested in understanding the topic, not only learning to get a degree. And for some reason, it made me feel as though I would be able to understand the level of physics the book will try to teach.

During the next few weeks, we will see if this holds true.
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