u/jdaprile18

Mostly whats in the title, I have always viewed thermodynamics under the lens that if it were possible to describe the system totally, from start to end, an identical system would be identical at any point in time to another system under the same conditions.

Meaning that regardless of the number of particles, most of thermodynamics still assumes that the changes occurring within a system are governed by some (incomprehensibly complex) multi particle interaction.

Is this, at least generally, the correct interpretation? That thermodynamics, as it was initially formulated, still assumes that the movement of particles within the system is completely deterministic, and that all the statistics used is necessary because it simply is not possible to solve or even write out the trajectories of n particles?

So far this subreddit has been total doom and gloom, where every single post has been "hi, I am a PhD materials scientist with x (perfect resume) from y (extremely prestigous school with very good PI) and I cant seem to find a single open position".

As someone starting a graduate degree for materials science this always scares the shit out of me until it turns out that pretty much every single one of these posts involves someone who requires sponsorship. This is not to dog on people not born in the united states but it seems like thats not really an applicable situation for most people trying to get into the field.

So, I'm having trouble gauging how difficult it will be to find a position after my PhD given that there never seem to be many job search posts coming from people who are already citizens. I don't know if this is because its actually not that competitive if you are already a citizen or if these just get drowned out by everyone else.

How difficult would it be to get hired in some process engineering type role with a PhD in materials science? Assuming experience with LPCVD, and a lot of the common characterization techniques (SEM, TEM, XRD, XPS, absorbance and transmission spectroscopy, and some Raman and Photoluminesence techniques). The immediately obvious problem I can see is that a university lab differs hugely in scale to any sort of commercial environment, but it would think that this would be the case for most incoming applicants with a PhD.

P.S. I get that no one can predict what the job market will look like 5 years from now, its still useful information to know what it looks like now.

Im currently starting a PhD in materials science, with research focused on thin film semiconductors, my hope is to transition over to the semiconductor industry afterwards, but there are certain things that hiring managers seem to be looking for that I have no idea how I would get experience in. My main problem is that my undergraduate was a chemistry degree, and not at all focused on engineering. I can expect to get experience with thin film characterization and CVD as part of the doctorate, but because a PhD is highly specialized, there are a lot of more general skills that I just wont be able to practice. There are things that obviously should not be taken seriously, like I would not state that I was familiar with lithography because I looked it up online. But other, more general stuff, like SPC, seem like they would be very possible to get comfortable with on my own. I understand that "implemented x methodology to fix Y problem" looks a lot better than "familiar with working principals of x methodology", but in the case that I do not have access to some way of learning it "officially" would it make sense to try and do it on my own?

Hoping someone here can help, I'm starting to get into electrochemistry for the first time as a part of graduate school. One of the problems that came up is my pretty limited exposure to modeling based on quantum systems, particualarly those that involve energy surfaces.

My basic understanding is that the non-adiabatic method involves assuming that, because the nuclear coordinates change on a timescale much larger than the scale of an electron, it is possible to generate a "curve" by computing steady state electronic wave-functions for a number of nonvariable nuclear coordinates and piece together a curve based on the eigenstates of these wavefunctions. So, when I see an "adiabatic energy surface" I picture that any point on the graph represents an eigenvalue for a steady state wavefunction for that particular nuclear coordinate.

At the moment it is not necessary for me to be involved with any of the adiabatic methods, so I'm mostly just hoping someone can confirm or fill in the gaps here.

The long and short of it is that this is the first time I'm living on my own, currently my only source of income will be a 2300 a month stipend (before taxes). I'm trying to gauge how realistic my current setup is, the good news is that I have no student loan debt, I own my car, and I have about 10000 in the bank currently.

The math I have worked out so far for the monthly is as follows

Estimated monthly income after taxes=1982

My rent is 875 a month, plus utilities comes out to about= -950

Groceries (my first time shopping entirely on my own, so could vary substantially, I picked the higher number though)=-300

Car insurance (minimum coverage for me)=-90

Health insurance=-500

MMA classes= -90

So far this gives me exactly 52 dollars a month thats not immediately tied into something else. I might not be accustomed at all to personal finance but even I can tell that this is not livable, and eventually I will burn into my savings. The good news is that the college does permit PhD students to work part time, and I'm thinking about getting a weekend only job as a server, I have no idea how much this could pay but I would guess it would be about an extra 200 a week or 800 a month. To me, 850 is probably enough windfall for whatever else could show up aside from some huge car repair or medical problem.

The program is a combined masters and PhD, so my duties at the college prevent me from working during the week due to coursework. But, during the summer it would be possible in theory to work far more hours while only doing the lab work at college.

To me it seems like 500 a month for shitty health insurance provided through the college is kinda expensive, but this is my first time I have been on my own health insurance, so I dont really know. This is a part I am truly looking for advice on, because if I could get this down it would help enormously, I just dont really know where to start looking for cheap plans.

In general I am looking for advice from anyone else who has been in a similar situation, particularly for graduate school stipends. Obviously I could drop the MMA classes, but I would prefer not to because this is the only time I'm really active as well as being the only hobby I really have at the moment.

Hello, I'm starting a PhD in materials science shortly in a group that focuses on thin film characterization. My dilemma is that I wish to remain employable within more standard/general roles in industry, namely as a process engineer. While I feel certain the PhD will contain plenty of opportunities to learn characterization techniques, I dont know for sure whether or not I will learn much involved with the actual fabrication processes. This lab has produced successful process engineers before, but the CVD/Lithography related experience came from visiting scholar programs with other schools, which typically had more advanced facilities for that sort of work. Because of this, I am sure that this sort of experience is not a given in the program, and I'm wondering if there is some other surefire way to get that on a CV. Ideally this would be something I could do during the PhD, like an internship or part time job, but I don't totally know the rules regarding this at my university. It would not be a major deal to me if I would have to work somewhere else for a year after graduating, but I dont know that there are that many positions that really teach the ins and outs of this. I'm hoping someone already in the industry can give me some advice.

Hello, I will be moving out to Colorado to pursue a funded PhD, however, due to a lot of dicking around when I was younger, by the time I start I will be about 26, I also do not have a masters yet, so it will take the full 5 years. I'm not thrilled about how long its taken me but it ultimately does not bother me that much. What I am having trouble with is finding housing in my price range that doesn't seem like I will be surrounded by younger students.

The stipend is only around 2300 a month, so wherever I go I will probably have to get a roommate, I'm hoping anyone whos been in a similar scenario can help me by telling me how they managed to find housing/roommates in a state they have never lived in. I think the major reason why its been difficult to find nonuniversity affiliated housing is that the city this is located in is essentially built around the university.

Hi, Ive recently been admitted into a materials science PhD program, but I worry about industry outlook. The research is in thin film semiconductor materials for solar panels, in my head this positions me best for work in a semiconductor fab somewhere, but I still dont feel like I know enough about the employabillity of this kind of PhD. From what I can tell, all of this groups previous students did fairly well for themselves, with about half of them going into industry and the remaining half staying in academia. All the same, the program is both very new and very small, however. the school itself is R1 and pretty good for adjacent fields, (mechanical engineering, chemistry, physics, etc).

If it were possible, I would discuss it with professors I already know, but my bachelors was in chemistry, and most of the advice they could give is solely relevant to chemistry PhDs. So, I am sort of forced to look around for people who did similar research, I would take advice from anyone who studied materials science though. My major concern is with the reputabillity of the program and with the specificity of the research. I worry mostly that my future might become to tied to the semiconductor market, which itself is subject to frequent change. I dont know how possible it is to move across different subfields within materials science. In any case, any advice would be appreciated. I assume that it would be a good idea to attempt to land an internship in the final couple years of the phd.

Might be a stupid question but I am a chemistry student preparing for a materials science PhD. For chemisty we explain the conduction in solids by applying molecular orbital theory to large numbers of atomic orbitals. As I understand it this is something that is more conceptual. I have also read about blochs theorem, which is used to generate single electron steady state solutions to the wave function for an electron in an infinite periodic lattice. This seems to be what I'm looking for, but the text book I read did not bother to show how these solutions generate energy bands and forbidden regions.

Since the potential is not time dependent, my guess is that allowed energies depend entirely on the wave length of allowed Bloch waves, meaning that there should be a continuous (In an actually infinite crystal) range of allowed k values followed by a range of disallowed k values, making up the "band gap". I am having trouble finding this in the solution though. I'm hoping someone can help explain where that arises in the solution for me.