Physics is written in mathematics, but a physicist uses that mathematics in a particular way — with an eye always on the physical meaning, a tolerance for approximation, and a toolkit of tricks that turn a frightening problem into a familiar one. Mathematical methods is the connective tissue of a physics degree: the techniques every other branch quietly assumes you can already do.
This branch gathers those tools with a physicist's slant — dimensional analysis and estimation,
vectors and coordinate systems, complex numbers as phasors, separation of variables and
eigenfunction expansions, Green's functions, and index notation. The heavy machinery itself lives
in