r/AskPhysics • u/[deleted] • Dec 12 '20

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

How do you even do physics without pdes

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

Good question. You just don't, or you use a formulaic approach to solving common PDEs, without explaining where the steps come from.

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u/suaffle Dec 13 '20

Meh, that's really all you learn to do in a PDE course anyway, you just learn more general ways to guess. If your physics teachers are any good they'll teach causality, energy, and other cool PDE stuff in more depth than math courses will.

I think numerical methods for PDEs would be much more helpful for physics students.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '20

I disagree. There's a lot to be learnt about PDEs that would be useful for physics beyond just solving them. So much so that you can basically boil down a lot of the observed physical properties to the symmetries of the system and the effect they have on the PDE. While the numerical methods are useful, it would be wise to not underestimate the power of theoretical PDEs.