Thanks! I've been considering it (or enough detailed instructions to build one) since starting the project. I need to get a working model first though ;)
We discussed wave functions, probability, fermions/bosons, did calculations for particle in a box, the Schrödinger model, and went just up to deriving the hydrogen atom. Nothing super fancy, but it was one heck of an experience!
As I've pointed out before, his concession at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35350 was both witty and graceful. It's great that he's still active here! and anyway he's done a ton of things that are a lot more important than that bit.
It's really interesting, in the UK I don't think we did (but I later studied Physics at university) - but we did have Further Maths which covered more advanced mathematics.
Also your project is incredible btw, maybe look into robotics too.
I went to a peer school that had at least a couple of math teachers with PhDs—my friends at the time who took their classes were, if I recall, nationally competitive in math olympiads.
All I did was provide him the space and time to work on the project ... his parents funded the entire project, but will get reimbursement soon. It's the great minds, and the desire to have meaningful projects that make Exeter such an awesome place. Byran is one of a kind!!!!
Some public schools in very wealthy counties will teach some basic quantum mechanics in honors/AP classes, too. All you have to do is acquire parents that can afford the shittiest neighborhood in those districts!
They did in mine in the Netherlands. Also electronics and programming (this was a long time ago so it was all pretty new); it was a special class to prep for university more than the regular curriculum does, but it was a public school and not even a very good one; just a few really good and switched on teachers (physics, math and chem).
The community college option is available to anyone who’s willing to spend a couple evenings a week taking classes, so I don’t think it’s really that out of reach. Most countries don’t offer their high school students any opportunity to study material that advanced.
Your first 3 options are mostly “be born to the right parents”. So I couldn’t tell if your remark of “it’s more possible than you’d think!” Was serious or not.
Hell I went to a really selective school. But even then, within that the top students, whom I was not one, got to do some extra stuff that would have greatly interested me and I would have been able to do. But my grades in humanities weren’t good enough to be one of the best.
In the high school in Poland I attended, I lucked into being in a class with a university TA assigned as physics teacher, and he did manage to sneak in QM - more-less the same stuff as 'Hello9999901 listed in their reply.
(He also taught us differentiation in the first semester, and basic integrals in the second, because as he said, you cannot learn physics properly without those tools. This annoyed the heck out of our math teacher; she ended up deciding that, if we're learning this anyway, we might as well learn it properly - and gave us a much heavier intro to calculus in the last months of the last year.)
The USA has some great schools. OP goes to Phillips Exeter Academy, which is an exclusive private school that ranks among the best high schools in the country.
Bryan is in his last year of high school.
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Keep building!