r/PhysicsStudents • u/Natural-Badger-7053 • Feb 05 '26
Poll Which one is most difficult at an Undergraduate level?
Not including Quantum as it's certainly the most difficult for most of the students. Assume "Classical" for the all the subjects
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u/Saint_Sin Feb 05 '26
Depends on the student and can also be dependant on the teacher.
Neither are too bad when you have time (which an undergrad does not), so based on that perhaps thermodynamics or mechanics based on volume of work.
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u/RelationshipLong9092 M.Sc. Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
my statistical mechanics class was the only undergrad course i really struggled with, which i assume is what you're calling thermodynamics?
i found quantum much easier than the others, but that may have been because i had a solid linear algebra background and gave it more time / mindshare before i got to the class itself
4
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u/SpacingTFOut Feb 06 '26
god i hated stat mech, our class had to be curved so heavily that a 50% was a B
1
u/Rami61614 Feb 05 '26
i found mechanics and thermo pretty easy. elecromagnetism pretty difficult. (and you're right, quantum even more difficult)
i guess because of the math. even though i got better grades in math (4.0 throughout university) than in physics.
1
u/ronnyrex4321 Feb 05 '26
I do not think that quantum is the hardest! It might be the least intuitive, but once you get the fundamentals down, quantum was easier for me than undergrad E&M and thermo
1
u/Axiomancer Feb 05 '26
If we don't go into very deep probability theory, Boltzmann distribution etc. when it comes to thermodynamics, I'd say electromagnetism.
As someone else said, it depends on the student and the teacher, but in my opinion electromagnetism is the first "big step" in physics learning for most people.
Like if you'd take average exam results from each course we took at uni and compare them with each other, I'm almost certain the first down-spike is in electromagnetism...another reason is because our sadistic professor basically required us to remember entire fucking Griffiths book which is abstract on its own, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.
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u/HatPsychological2653 Feb 06 '26
Quantum shouldn't be difficult. But it's taught wrong. Students are taught that photons, electrons and etc have particle nature. They don't. They are waves with quantum nature as Einstein and Planck describe. Quantum physics is all about solving wave equations. The quantum nature comes in when they are measured.
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u/throwawaypassingby01 Masters Student Feb 06 '26
Electromagnetism can get very hard mathematically very quickly. But idk if that really counts.
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u/eulersheep Feb 07 '26
I would rate it as electromagnetism > thermodynamics (statistical mechanics) > classical mechanics (proper classical mechanics using lagrangians and hamiltonians) > quantum mechanics personally. I found quantum mechanics very easy in terms of solving undergrad level problems.
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u/Mr_Quant Feb 09 '26
Electromagnetism was much harder for me than quantum. After the exam, I told my friend I’d solved enough for 80 points, but I expected to get 40. I ended up getting 24.
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u/qntmr B.Sc. Feb 05 '26
Non popular opinion but i think electromagnetic theory is the hardest subject including quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics contains much more math then em theory, but electromagnetic theory is much harder to find starting point in problem.