Russia’s most notorious physics exam

[@styssine]

I did my PhD under supervision of one of the original 43. He is listed at number 21 as Балашов. I worked with him when he was in his late 70's and he was the brightest person I ever met, not only of that age, but overall. He had a long career spanning 6 decades, made notable discoveries in nuclear reactions, wrote several graduate level textbooks and supervised 50+ PhDs.

[@Keylandors]

in what age u did it?

[@und3rcut535]

это мой отец о боже мой

[@Shaker626]

@@und3rcut535 Your father is a genius

[@sapprorr6728]

@@und3rcut535есть кем гордиться

[@saadiefist]

​@@und3rcut535действительно? каково жить с выдающимся физиком и быть его потомком?

[@dargi_am]

13:00 I studied in this institute (MIPT) and Landau was one of its founders. When I was still there I met a few students that have passed the modern version of the exam and these guys were all brilliant. It is quite curious to hear about this exam outside of my university and in such a big channel in english. Thank you for sharing this with such a wide public!

[@user-mc1sj9bf3i]

Aunty tibees I feel cry

[@MAKMath]

Next Year I start studying in МФТИ, I have received an acceptance into ФЭФМ и ЛФИ, which one do you think I should take if I am more interested in Quantum technologies?

[@dargi_am]

@MAKMath Congrats ! It depends on the technology you're interested in. I have a friend in ФЭФМ that works with quantum dots and a friend in ЛФИ that works with algorithms for quantum computing. МФТИ also has its own quantum computer developed by them.

[@MercuriusCh]

@@MAKMathконечно ФОПФ (нынешний ЛФИ)

[@juanluis1928]

Its described in the book "The Making of a soviet scientist" by Roald Z. Sagdeev

[@daniilasafov9211]

It was unexpected to see my surname in Tibeese's video (I am one of the people who passed the exams relatively recently) By the way - the list is sparse because people aren't required to pass all the exams anymore. Often to study at the department it is enough to pass math-1 and quantum mechanics (depends on the number of people who want to join the institute and the university where they study) Thank you for popularising Landau's theoretical minimum!

[@abrikos1100]

heh

[@ArawnOfAnnwn]

I wonder if Landau would have approved of this change in the exam policy...

[@BryanLu0]

​@@ArawnOfAnnwnI mean the purpose of the exam (to be his pupil) doesn't really exist anymore

[@felicytatomaszewska]

@@abrikos1100 Are you chicken?

[@abrikos1100]

@felicytatomaszewska lol

[@andraslibal]

I had the privilege of meeting and chauffeuring Alexei Abrikosov in 2005, he told me about passing the exam and his relationship with his teacher, Landau. It was one of the most interesting conversations of my life as a young Physicist, he told me about many things during the one hour trip, how he could not find the money to support the scientists at the institution in the Soviet Union, how he came to the US, about his eye surgery (that is why he needed a chauffeur, his vision in his old age was poor even after the surgery), about his discovery of the superconducting vortices and how Landau dismissed it and how hard it was to publish. It was very interesting to grasp how his brain even in his 80s was faster than mine in my 20s at its peak, yet he was never arrogant and talked with me, a graduate student with respect and care. I even have his book signed to me by him. One of my prized possessions.

[@The_Tauri]

When I was preparing for exams, I used to get "black market" Russian textbooks and problem sets and they were infamously hard. You had to be quite creative to solve most of them, and if you were able to, then you could sail past any "normal" exam. In Russia, the exam does you. :D

[@daigakunobaku273]

In modern Russia, it is compensated by the fact that nearly everyone cheats, even in the best universities, really.

[@novamisponge5325]

Can you name some examples? I'm interested

[@ytb40]

I got a Russian Math/Physics textbook too almost 15 years ago- It took me a week to work through even the first three pages. One needed so much more math as a prerequsite than is was taught even in a "usual" math diploma./ master.

[@AlexKarasev]

Ah, a very good Yakov Smirnoff homage. That guy is still performing, apparently. Let me try: In free America, youtube watches you.

[@PrincipiaScientifica]

The soviet-era physics books and textbooks are brilliant. They are still used in many countries by high schoolers to prepare for Olympiads such as IPhO. Irodov's "Problems in General Physics" is a classic example.

[@reveng3r]

In Landau's textbook the word "obvious" is often used to indicate conclusions that were not obvious even to his co-author.

[@vitalyl1327]

The average expansion of each of the "obvious" in Ландавшиц was around 3 pages of very dense mathematics. Some were considerably longer. Fun times!

[@optimusprime9456]

It's general author rule: Each time you feel lazy to write the proof, use «obvious» =))

[@sergeykessel2560]

Actually there's a joke that when Landau lost 10 pages of proof in a tram they just decided to put "it is obvious that... " in the book

[@alm7979]

Landau's textbooks were more like solving puzzles rather than textbooks. He was a brilliant scientist, but I'd say, pick up different textbooks.

[@sergeykessel2560]

@@alm7979 I studied that one. That was okay, just takes a bit of effort)

[@markeggerman8301]

I love videos like this no background music ... just talking and graphics

[@ivorcornish4267]

and such a gentle voice.

[@koka3243]

One of the guys from the 'sparse list' here. Thanks for making an episode on the Minimum! Might just add that I learned of the practice of repeating the same problems the hard way: I was taking the QM portion of the exam together with a friend of mine: we came into the room at the same time, and were given problems to solve, each one of us getting a different set. I was able to solve all of mine, but my friend failed to solve one of his, which was it for him (he eventually quit physics altogether, started a successful business and never looked back). I had to come for the second half of the exam the next day. I was naturally curious about the problem my friend failed to solve, and since I was in the same room and heard its formulation, I was able to do a couple of attempts at it when I got home. None worked, and I figured that it must require something else that neither one of us knew. In the end, I went to bed that night not too worried about the problem since the it was my friend's, not mine. Now imagine my reaction when the very first problem I was given on my 2nd day of the exam turned out to be this same unsolved one. Took me a couple of hours to get 'Hmm, I guess you can solve it this way as well' in the end. Funny fact: many years later I came across a Rev Mod Phys article, where my examiner was one of the authors. In the middle of it was that very problem from the exam, central to the entire theory presented in the article. The year of the paper's publication coincided with the year I took the exam.

[@koka3243]

For the curious, here's the problem itself: calculate the energy of the bound state of a particle moving in 2D in the presence of the potential V(r) = - a^2 / (r^2 + b^2), where r is the particle's distance to the origin and a, b are arbitrary real numbers.

[@numbersix8919]

@@koka3243 Thanks, that's a great true story. You did very well in the test. What's the answer?

[@InXLsisDeo]

@@numbersix8919 Let me solve this quantum mechanics problem step by step. First, in 2D polar coordinates, the Schrödinger equation is: -ℏ²/2m [1/r ∂/∂r(r ∂R/∂r) + 1/r² ∂²Φ/∂φ²]ψ - a²/(r² + b²)ψ = Eψ where ψ(r,φ) = R(r)Φ(φ) Due to rotational symmetry, the angular part solution is: Φ(φ) = e^(imφ) where m is an integer This gives ∂²Φ/∂φ² = -m²Φ The radial equation becomes: -ℏ²/2m [1/r ∂/∂r(r ∂R/∂r) - m²/r²]R - a²/(r² + b²)R = ER For large r, the potential approaches zero, so for bound states: E < 0 Let's define k = √(-2mE/ℏ²) For r → ∞: The equation approximates to: r²R'' + rR' - (k²r² + m²)R = 0 This is a modified Bessel equation The solution must decay at infinity, so: R(r) ∼ K_m(kr) for large r For r → 0: The equation is dominated by: -ℏ²/2m [r²R'' + rR' - m²R] - a²R = 0 This suggests R(r) ∼ r^|m| for small r A full solution would require numerical methods due to the complicated form of the potential. However, we can determine if bound states exist. The potential has a minimum value of -a²/b² at r = 0 For bound states to exist, we must have: E > -a²/b² Therefore, bound states exist with energies in the range: -a²/b² < E < 0 While we cannot find an analytical expression for the exact energy levels, we can say that: There will be a finite number of bound states Each state is characterized by two quantum numbers: The radial quantum number n = 0,1,2,... The angular momentum quantum number m = 0,±1,±2,... States with the same |m| but opposite signs are degenerate The exact energy values would need to be found numerically by solving the full radial equation with appropriate boundary conditions and normalization.

[@InXLsisDeo]

I didn't redact this answer, Claude Sonnet AI did it. 🤣🤣

[@DrTruffaldino]

@@koka3243 Привет Кока! Было большой неожиданностью случайно наткнуться на твой коммент. Это Игорь (бывший постдок Хoлдейна). Как твои дела? П.С. Уравнение, которое ты решал, сводится к уравнению Хейна (Heun equation).

[@ShivMathur]

I am 58 years now. When in high school preparing for the engineering entrance exam in India called JEE in 1984, we used to buy Russian books for physics apart from Resnik Halliday. During the Diwali fair in our town there use to be a book stall selling many Russian books including story books, I was very much mesmerised by the Russian books

[@ahwabanmukherjee5065]

Are you an IIT alum, Sir, if I may ask?

[@vinsin328]

Yep, for 1999, I read I E Irodov and Resnik Halliday.

[@harsh-238]

And we still refer to Russian books for JEE Adv.

[@skshrivastava3937]

We solve irodov for nee and jee

[@harsh-238]

@@skshrivastava3937 not for NEET!!

[@MrDmitrmipt]

Btw, Pomeranchuk is a legendary scientist. He introduced an extremely beautiful method on cooling based on melting solid He-3 isotope. And he done this based on purely theoretical arguments, even before He-3 was obtained in labs.

[@igortovstopyat-nelip648]

And, he did a lot more.

[@philipp5142]

He was Polish.

[@DS91284]

So he was like House MD of theoretical physics.

[@akshatpathrikar7080]

It had to be Landau, one of the most versatile physicists. I studied physics from his books, his way of writing is concise and yet full of insightful information, for instance, his presentation of nöether's theorems is the most neat one yet! Thanks for making this video.

[@alexdee781]

This was your best video so far! Thank you

[@Inkedalic3]

My mum grew up in the societ union and she NEVER stops talking about how hard her exams were and how easy the gcses in the uk are in comparison lol.

[@skywillfindyou]

Societ Union?

[@Inkedalic3]

@skywillfindyou is it so difficult to understand what I meant and that it was a typo?

[@meshackgaolathe6492]

I agree with your mum. I was doing a A levels in the UK in the 70s. I came across Soviet A levels equivalent maths textbook. It was all Greek to me.

[@yozhleszy]

@@meshackgaolathe6492 сие не удивительно. наши буквы произошли от греческих.

[@screamofastrachan]

@@yozhleszy он имел ввиду сложность прочитанного, это как на русском сказать: "в книге всё было будто по китайски"

[@TheLoneWolf_1013]

My favorite educational youtuber. Your soothing voice, your simple yet intriguing way of explaining different topics, and the topics chosen, add up to the best academic youtuber.

[@nikitachaykin6774]

I think it is important to mention that Landau had a reputation of Rock Star in Soviet Union. He was very promiscuous, and it seemed like that there was no woman who could say no to him because of his charms. But also he was very sharp tongued and was famous to be able to enrage powerful people, and his time in Gulag is more related to that. Because of that amount of people who wanted to become his grad students was extremely large and to deal with that this exam and late course of theoretical physics appeared. Even after his death he was role model for many Soviet physicist.

[@matrixnorm6672]

So he was just like Harvey Weinstein with his casting couch.

[@TheChairmaker]

@@matrixnorm6672 more like Feynman

[@crabbyhayes1076]

This reminds me of my university physics exam experience. In a 60 minute test, we would be given maybe six problems, which would have taken a good 3 hours to finish. After the prof graded the exams, including awarding partial-credit, the passing grade would be somewhere around 30%. So how, exactly, is that a test of what we learned in the class? What a joy it was to enter the industrial workplace, where the goal of an exam was to confirm the students actually learned the material being taught.

[@stevebarlow3310]

Thank you! For anyone unfamiliar with the Landau & Lifschitz series on theoretical physics, I would recommend the first few section of Vol 1 on Classical Mechanics. It reads more like exquisite poetry than physics; Landau developed the intimate connection between symmetries and the structure of classical mechanical theory. In my tiny brain, I found the whole thing mind boggling.

[@colinadams3771]

@@marksmith3947 finish the story please :)

[@marksmith3947]

@@colinadams3771 I was at a coffeeshop by the university of Washington..i struck up a conversation with an old Russian man I had not seen before. He introduced himself, showed his ID. I was a math grad student so I know his name. That's the whole story

[@marksmith3947]

@@colinadams3771 I wrote a reply but YT didn't save it. I met him at a coffeeshop by the university of Washington. I didn't recognize him so I said hello. He showed me his ID. I was a math grad student so I knew the name

[@davidmusoke]

A kind and gentle voice, that forces you to listen. Thank you for the great topic.

[@NoreenHoltzen]

Here for the soothing voice and clear thought process.

[@crazzylongears8835]

Same here 😊

[@erikvissers4934]

And here.

[@babyboomer9560]

@@erikvissers4934and here….with the addition of being mesmerized by those loving eyes

[@offilawNoone]

My uncle was one of them. He died two years ago. He left behind two hundred-kilogram sacks of his scientific papers.

[@markusba]

I vividly recall my first encounter with the textbook of Landau and Lifshitz. During the theoretical mechanics lecture Prof. Fritzsch seemed to recollect and present in a certain style. Without telling explicitly he was using the exact text, formulas and derivations from the classical mechanics textbook word by word knowing them by heart. So the book was actually our lecture notes. Used different (modern) books for most other topics but the problems and also the huge scope of each of the volumes are still impressive. Another interesting source to get to know more about Landau's school of theoretical physics is the preview test chapter from M. Shifman's book "Under The Spell Of Landau: When Theoretical Physics Was Shaping Destinies".

[@stearin1978]

10:15 - GULag is organization that governs the labour camps, not the name of the camp. It is abbreviation of Main Camp's Agency. It's like FBP - Federal Bureau of Prisons in USA.

[@moykumir]

but not "camp". "лагерь" there is prison, not camp

[@Mglunafh]

To be more precise, Landau spent around 1 year in Butyrskaya prison (Бутырская тюрьма) in Moscow

[@yozhleszy]

@@Mglunafh к тому же Бутырка это следственная и пересыльная тюрьма, не имеющая отношения к ГУЛагу. правда, во время войны там временно организовали производство.

[@hipals6859]

Love watching your videos before bed. Thanks for sharing this interesting topic

[@SeanGhaeli]

I remember reading about this in my junior year and feeling better about my exams 😅 It's cool that you made a video about this!

[@erdossuitcase7667]

Landau invented a logarithmic scale for genuises. Einstein was at 0.5 and most of the giants of quantum mechanic were at 1. He originally ranked himself at 2.5 but later his ranking moved up to 1.5.

[@kevinkarlwurzelgaruti458]

That's an interesting concept. Do you know where could I go to read more about it?

[@erdossuitcase7667]

​@@kevinkarlwurzelgaruti458wonderofphysics smartest-physicists

[@MrBladerun]

@@kevinkarlwurzelgaruti458 Citation: According to V. L. Ginzburg's memoirs, the qualification scale of physicists was logarithmic, that is, a physicist of class 1 did 10 times more than a physicist of class 2, etc. The fifth grade was assigned to pathologists, that is, those whose work Landau considered "pathological." Of the physicists of the 20th century, only Einstein had the highest class of 0.5, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, Feynman and some others had class 1. Landau first assigned himself to class 2.5, then transferred to class 2 and then to class 1.5. Ginzburg got class 3. If I remember correctly class 4.0 was for those who completed Phd and can work and produce results independently.

[@Wormhole1207]

Then Newton must be on 0.1 or lower 😅 joking Anyways this is interesting information, I'll surely dig into it

[@SuperFerz]

@@Wormhole1207 Newton was ranked at 0, meaning that for a 0.5-unit difference between Newton and Einstein, the former has more than 3x contribution 😅

[@cochisenahuh7939]

Everything is so well researched and brilliantly presented!!! Thank you and hope to see more in 2025!

[@user-sr9dn2uj5j]

My professor was a student of Landau's student who passed all of the exams, what a discovery😅 such a small world we live in

[@rtarbinar]

wow, what are their Erdos numbers?

[@LawpickingLocksmith]

Wow this sorted them out. Fascinating from the intellectual point, sad to hear how they got treated. Huge THANKS to you not playing useless music and keeping to the point.

[@Astrelix]

Hi! Have you already taken a look into brazil's ITA (Aeronautics Institute of Technology) entrance exam? The exam itself is intended for high schoolers, but it requires a very deep knowledge of Math, Physics and Chemistry. It is considered one of the world's hardest, often compared with JEE advanced in terms of difficulty, specially because of its physics exam. Out of 9781 candidates, only 180 get approved (So, around 1.8% acceptance rate, which is pretty absurd). The ITA offers free education, housing and food for its students, and it is the birthplace of the world's 3rd largest airplane manufacturer (Embraer). I was fortunate to be among the 1.8% accepted this year after months of intense preparation. The exam's challenges taught me perseverance and a deep love for learning, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how it compares to other rigorous exams worldwide. It would be very interesting to see ITA featured in one of your videos!

[@sambhavnath6668]

You are doing a great job in academics wishing you good luck.You are making videos of every toughest exams across the countries thats great I wish you good luck and happy new year to you and your family and also to everyone

[@trevortaylor5501]

Someone once told me that thinking outside the box was not useful, I said why. He said throw the box away and your free to think of any solution. I'll never forget that.

[@leylayetmez]

Lev Landau was my fathers Teacher in BSU (Baku state University) . He had so memories back then

[@philipp5142]

He was a Jew, not ruzzian.

[@jamesgornall5731]

My ex-wife is Russian; i met her in Tokyo at university. She gave a presentation in flawless Japanese on the topic of "cunning papers" in Russian exams; essentially, cheat sheets, because of the virtual impossibility of passing without engaging in the practice. When it came time for Q&A I asked her point blank in my inferior Japanese whether she had used them in the past. She burst out laughing and turned as red as a beetroot. I was in love. Oh, to be 20 again.

[@quasarsupernova9643]

If I took it, Landau would be humming constantly - it would sound like aum aum aum, as though he were meditating...

[@peterhall6656]

The reason is that only 43 Russians were actually sober during this period. Jokes aside, at the upper levels the Russian intellectual tradition is something like a slog through a Siberian wasteland - only the tough get through. There is a completley diifferent feel between French and Russian mathematics for instance. V I Arnold famously took the piss out of French abstraction as represented by the Bourbaki school. The Russian school of probability theory going back to Bernstein, Smirnov, Lyapunov, Kolmogorov etc is really hard core and you could not teach probability theory to US students starting with their work. For instance, it was Glivenko and Cantelli who proved that the empirical distribution function always converges to the actual distribution function and Kolmogorov found the asymptotically exact rate of this convergence, the rate of which turns out to be exponentially fast and independent of the unknown distribution function. This sort of foundational stuff is deep and the Russians are actually good at it. Cambridge Tripos students do get into such technicalities.

[@zerereka]

yes but they weren't all russian, they were soviet of different nationalities

[@vadimbellous8313]

@zerereka They were all products of the Soviet education system and its strict and unforgiving standards. Nationality was irrelevant; we identified as Soviet first and foremost. Well, that's how it was In Moscow and St. Petersburg. It could have been different in Ukraine, especially in the Western region, I know nationalism runs deep there. That's where the cringy self-glorifying phrase “Slava Ukraine” comes from.

[@krainiy.praviy.sleva.]

согласен с Арнольдом - Бурбаки - это худшее что могло произойти с математикой

[@gulk.5307]

love your videos so much 💗💗

[@hamdamoverali]

Thank you❤. Your content is truly inspiring.❤❤❤

[@mutabazimichaeljean]

hmmm 😁😁 Excellent and very interesting video as always

[@CHIEF_420]

☝️

[@GreenDrake1]

Landau couldn't have been sent to a "labor camp called the Gulags," as GULAG stands for "Главное управление исправительно-трудовых лагерей" (Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps), which means it was an organization - not the name of a specific prison, jail, camp, or any other place for serving sentences. (It is worth noting that complete historical analogies to this system can be found in other countries, such as the United States.) He was arrested at the age of 30 for distributing leaflets calling for the overthrow of the current state system - an act that, in any country, would have led to serious consequences for the accused. This does not mean, however, that the norms of that era were always humane or fair to everyone. It does, however, highlight the irreconcilable nature of all sides involved, accustomed as they were to resolving disputes over "who is right" through the most extreme and forceful methods. Landau was held in prison for one year before being released through the intercession of Kapitsa.

[@impassesetcheminsdetravers4955]

Lovely channel, I subscribed at once. I would certainly not have succeded to that exam, but I have a funny personal story. Some 56 years ago, I was preparing the exams for the French "grandes ecoles" in some Paris special highschool, and in the middle of the year I somehow felt that my computing ability growth was starting to stagnate. At that time my Physics professor was not so good, and somebody advised me to buy the Landau-Lifschitz book on mechanics, which I did. Each week-end I took a train (about 1hour and a half) to visit my parents in my native city, on one way I usually solved the math problem for the next week, and on the way back I tried some exercises in Landau's book. At the end of the year I was admitted to the best Science school (ENS Paris), in the specialty "mathematics" but with especially good results in Physics. Those results made the difference...😏😏

[@markkennedy9767]

I've studied Landau's Classical Mechanics and it is a beautiful, dense text of about 150 pages that covers all Lagrangian/Hamiltonian Mechanics. Edit: I see the Rutherford's formula section in the video 😅

[@sameergauria]

Seems like a good exam in that the time studying would be well spent -- no matter whether you passed or failed.

[@Conserpov]

The real reason why Landau ended up in prison was that - ironically - he was a *Communist extremist* who wanted USSR to militarily invade Europe in order to force it into Communism, as opposed to Stalin's "Socialism in one country" policy. This is why he wanted Stalin to be overthrown in the first place - Stalin was way too "moderate" for him. And there were millions of people in post-revolutionary USSR having similar ideas. Stalin's crackdown on political dissidents was not as black and white as it is usually portrayed as.

[@CalculatingPython]

Oops... 10:29 I've just realized that the video actually presents the anti-Stalin leaflet that got Landau into prison.

[@mariuszcieslak3667]

Socialism in one country - in ussr - from lisbon to vladivostok.

[@Conserpov]

@@mariuszcieslak3667 If that was true, why didn't USSR ever include any of Eastern Europe? Because it isn't true, and you don't know and don't want to know anything about history.

[@mariuszcieslak3667]

@@Conserpov Because they were stopped during polish-bolsheviks war 1919-1921.

[@Conserpov]

@@mariuszcieslak3667 Except POLAND attacked Soviet Russia for a land grab, not the other way around. You are not even trying.

[@BlackHermit]

This is the true test of Russia. I never studied in that institute (MIPT) founded by Landau, but I do like taking a test from time to time!

[@warmike]

how many have you passed?

[@BlackHermit]

@@warmike At least 0!

[@espada228-d9u]

Im currently preparing to pass the exam on field theory and the way you presented the exam actually makes me scared for my life the way I struggled to figure out the distribution of light intensity at a caustic for 3 entire days😭 I mean imagine me getting to GR with this massive skill issue 😭

[@olegbal5633]

У нас у студентов в СССР ходил такой анекдот : Поезд метро,конечная станция, по вагонам проходит полицейский и проверят не остался ли кто в вагонах (так как поезд уходит в депо ) и он видит на сиденье человека спящего с книгой , на обложке надпись : Ландау Теория Поля. И полицейский будит человека и говорит - Агроном, надо освободить вагон, конечная станция. There was a joke among our students in the USSR: A subway train, a terminal station, a policeman passes through the cars and checks to see if anyone is still in the cars (as the train leaves for the depot) and he sees a man sleeping on the seat with a book, the inscription on the cover: Landau Field Theory. And the policeman will be there and says - The Agronomist needs to release the carriage, the terminal station. ( ( ( Field is an agricultural and physical term)😄

[@chertoha]

ok, 43 passed it while Landau was alive. If you count the number of people that passed the same first 9 topics but later, you find another ten. After it was not required to pass it in full, you can find another 15ish that got 8 out of those 9 nonetheless. Now it is really sparse because you only need some topics, not all. So really anybody on that list of a few hundred passed what was needed. It's fun to see a couple dozen classmates from my class of 2003 on the list :)

[@haideral5104]

In one North African country, we had a university teacher who had studied in the the USSR. In Calculus 1, he gave us photocopied pages from a Russian maths book on integrals. It was impossible (within the exam) to solve the integrals without knowing many tricks from the handout. So I wonder if you have to be really brilliant or if you need to have a large toolbox of tricks, or maybe both, to pass these exams?

[@carolo364]

Thanks for the video Tibees!

[@IgorMoiseevAdventurer]

Thanks for sharing, I was not aware of Landau’s minimum. In math there is similar A mathematical trivium by V.I. Arnol'd

[@DrTruffaldino]

Привет Игорь! Случайно наткнулся на твой коммент. Я Игорь (бывший постдок Дубровина в Tриесте). Где ты сейчас? Как твои дела? Я здесь в комментах встретил еше своих знакомых из Принстона. Мир тесен!

[@getawayunclejohn7107]

I study at MIPT which Landau founded, but i doubt i would ever solve a single problem in his theoretical minimum

[@jaw0449]

Some of the questions are more difficult than many PhD qualification problems

[@eternaldoorman5228]

I never got past chapter 1 of Landau & Lifshitz' Classical Mechanics, ...

[@Штерн-я1с]

Same story

[@hywelgriffiths5747]

They're grad level books really. They assume you've already had undergrad level courses in mechanics, electrodynamics, qm, etc

[@antontsau]

For the whole our department, 100 students every year, this could be done not more than 5. Usually 2-3 were complete crooks who end up in Yahroma asylum and the rest just memorised all this to pass the exam. Everybody else got their "satisfactory" and instantly forget it as the worst nightmare.

[@S-W-D]

To be honest, they were Soviet scientists

[@clownphabetstrongwoman7305]

I am not sure many in the West understand the difference.

[@cerealport2726]

so....?

[@bogdana.luchko]

@@cerealport2726So he is not “a russian scientist”. He was from Azerbaijan. But even if you want to say that he was from soviet union, then call him “a soviet scientist”. “soviet” does not mean “russian”

[@herbie_the_hillbillie_goat]

@@bogdana.luchko Why are you whining about it?

[@herbie_the_hillbillie_goat]

Irrelevant

[@christopherneufelt8971]

Legend has it, that the candidates still sit on the same chairs and still try to pass the exams💀

[@jloiben12]

The US Bar exam is not a difficult test. There is a reason why there is a ~80% first time pass rate among those who take the bar immediately after they graduate law school

[@enzeru5491]

Curiously fascinating and exceptionally informative!!!!!!!🤔🙂😀😃👍👍.

[@Jimmy-vg2gd]

im happy that finally world will understand that russian physics-maths schools one of the best in the world.

[@drizer4real]

Loved this clip! As a collector of math and physics books, personally those books of Lifshitz and Landau are my absolute priced possesion , if I lose anything in life, these are the last to go. ❤

[@TheFaveteLinguis]

2:20 there is also a famous joke: These books are so complex that they were "written by Landau [exclusively] for Lifshitz."

[@butterw55]

Excellent presentation. Thanks!

[@TheGrysha]

One clarification: Landau's seminar wasn't closed, it was free to access to.

[@arnabpal6241]

What an incredible content, Tibees

[@Mr_Nobody-n6w]

Today is 'National mathematics day' in India

[@LAM_AUT_ECU]

I studied Theoretical Physics, though I would eventually become a Chemical Engineer. Of the 3 questions you shared, I only would have been able to solve 1. The math questions are easier, but I don't know if I would have solved them within the required time limit.

[@trionghost]

Landau was never in camps of GULAG (it's actually acronym and stands for "general directorate of correction camps"), he was in prison, and it was part of war inside political elites in USSR in 30th (he didn't write the letter he was accused of).

[@walkingwith_dinosaurs]

Landau was also polyamorous and made his wife to prepare the home for his guests and leave while they had their dates. He was also encouraging his wife to be polyamorous too but in her memoirs she wrote, she couldn't do it. She struggled but stayed with him anyway.

[@saitaro]

"labor camps called gulags." GULAG was an administrative unit, like a ministry. There was only one. The camps were simply called labor camps, often named after the region in which they were located.

[@МаргаритаИльина-ш2ф]

I studied here and have tried it. Actually some ours schoolers(16-17 years old) have passed this exam

[@darionbalkaran790]

you know its bad when you start seeing things you've never been taught.

[@bartmeijer1954]

The title "The theoretical minimum" has been borrowed by Leonard Susskind for his series of books on mechanics, quantum physics, and relativity. I read the mechanics book: it is interesting and it was challenging for me, but not half as challenging as the Russian exam, I'm sure.

[@daigakunobaku273]

Susskind's books are simplified versions of undergraduate courses in these subjects; Landau's exam was, like, on the cutting edge of science back when it was created.

[@vj.joseph]

Happy Christmas, love ❤

[@volgshtein]

Great video! Thank you

[@abarax_altered1666]

I read the title as physical exam and immediately thought my time has come. Then i reread it and thought nah I'm good.

[@paulbalduin]

I'd love a video where you show us the solutions for the example problems from the theoretical minimum!

[@dan-florinchereches4892]

Thank you for the video Tibees. Those questions look hard. For the math part I was thinking that the integral could be solved using Weierstrass substitution but that would not be elegant at all. As for the second problem I don't have much experience with differential equations so I was thinking along the lines of multiplying by x and grouping a bit so (xy')'=-xe^y (x!=0) but this doesn't seem particularly useful to me. Maybe just try to use Laplace transform and devise some initial conditions. I wish I was better maybe I should study and practice more

[@lidenbrock717]

A video solving that would be great

[@eternaldoorman5228]

5:08 Mew too?

[@enzeru5491]

Mewtwo???😱

[@Samhades]

calming voice😊

[@braudhadoch3432]

I am interested in what s 1600's test looked like in Graduate level. Does it look like a High school test today? Each year it gets harder and harder huh?

[@northbot]

Landau's Test highlights the psychology of intimidating newbies with mathematical physics questions containing no numeric characters.

[@АлексейТучак-м4ч]

there is nothing scary in that. Yet sometimes i hear people proclaim "i can do calculations with numbers, but all these x and y confuse me. Gimme numbers!" Usually they have problems with the simplest things like collecting terms, opening brackets, working with fractions.

[@vonPalme]

If someone asks me to recommend a book for studying physics, I still refer to Soviet ones. Last time it was 3 volumes of The Textbook of Elementary Physics by academician G.S. Landsberg, which I recommended to the student. However, it should be recognized that this advice applies only to classical theories. All the latest theories, especially those that tend to be saved with the help of unobservable entities such as dark matter or dark energy are out the circle))

[@eldrago19]

"I have put together an exam to test whether people have the minimum knowledge to engage in a serious conversation about physics. I expect only 1 or 2 people will pass each year "

[@MrSam1804]

in my time in university our professors prefered teaching us based on landafshitz books, ofc there were tons of others but all the exams were shaped around these problems with notorious notations if you know what i mean.

[@sanesanyo]

I remember as a high school student looking for difficult problems in physics to solve and stumbling about the problem set from Irodov. I remember how difficult this problem set was. Thus this doesnt surprise me one bit 😂😂.

[@MusCollab]

Has anyone tried solving an equation number 2 at 13:14?

[@jortor2932]

Yeah LANDAU'S i have tried it once years ago

[@vj470k]

No wonder Russia has the best rocketry and weaponry.

[@robgrune3284]

excellent video ! this young lady is a gem.

[@ДмитрийМатвеев-ш9ч]

Прелестная девушка рассказывает о Ландау и Лившице, что может быть лучше....

[@gott4bomb835]

Does it simply mean that some of the questions are ambiguous?

[@o-anonium8653]

6:48 Is the second Omega meant to be "Omega Prime" or is it just "Omega Dash" in physics?

[@sonyawix5871]

My compulsive ADHD brain now wants to challenge myself to take it. And I don’t know physics at all😑

[@Viljuri]

There's no question these people are far beyond ordinary appreciation. They are in the region close to Einstein/Feynman. As we are mere mortals dwelling on these plains, occasionally, or something, we should take these developments provided by you into account.

[@rayrocher6887]

Tibees, thanks, math was a course I like to understand, I like physics also

[@-HARDLIGHT-]

Merry Christmas

[@anastasiiauntilova8224]

Landau was born in Baku, Azerbaijan (Yes, it was a part of Russian Empire, but so was Poland when he was born) You can say he is a Soviet scientist, not Russian :(

[@keepcalm7453]

Merry Christmas, Toby!! ❤🎄💕❄💓⭐💝☃️🎅☃️💝⭐💓❄💕🎄❤

[@qentrepreneurship9987]

❤🎉Merry Xmas and Happy New Year ahead 🎉🎉 from lake Titicaca Peru

[@risboo6909]

Should this exam be used to assess LLMs performance instead of various typical problems currently in use? :)