"In English, "potpourri" is often used to refer to any collection of miscellaneous or diverse items."
So this morning I re-attacked Griffiths chapter 3, working through the examples and exercises on special relativity. I learned that in SR relativistic energy and the components of relativistic momentum are separately conserved and that if pμ is the energy-momentum 4-vector then the inner product pμpμ = (mc)2 which is handy for working out problems. Then I moved onto symmetries.
Lunchtime Amazon delivered two enormous parcels which like the particles I had been studying were mostly composed of empty space. The inventory comprised Clare's BBC Italian course, Iain Banks' two latest novels [Transition and Surface Detail] and two half-litre mugs for Clare with a cricketing-themed decoration.
This afternoon I made a start on Surface Detail but it's early days ... review to follow.
As I write this Clare is at college in Street 'talkin' Italian'. This followed her two-day exercise in self-sufficiency in our back garden as a result of which we now have a small allotment for growing potatoes and herbs.
