Ask a (former) Physics teacher.

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Everyone wants to be a Physicist... but few want to actually put in the time and hard work to actually learn Physics. I want to have a space to talk about actual Physics. By that I mean the type of Physics that you will learn if you decide to make a serious study of the subject in a University.

A couple of starting points.

1) Physics is based on experiment. If we can't test and prove an idea by experiment, then it isn't proven. If we find an experiment that contradicts a theory, then it isn't correct.

2) When you study or use Physics at any level, you will be mainly doing math. Philosophers will have long irrelevant discussions on why this should be. The fact is that math makes the Universe quite predictable in ways that nothing else does. And so, Physicists use mathematics.

3) Real work in Physics is for experts. Physics has advanced quite a bit since Galileo's day. To understand 500 years of progress, you need to put in time and effort to understand the mathematics and the techniques discovered by the brightest minds over a long time. There are no shortcuts.

This is why people who have never studied Physics want to talk about massless particles and the curvature of Space. These are topics that require a very advanced mathematics... so most people don't know that they are wrong.

A real study of Physics starts with Newton, and Galilean Relativity and Nobel Gas laws and optics and classic electronics. These are fascinating subjects and are in reach of most people (perhaps with help with basic calculus).

I taught Physics professionally on both a undergraduate and high school level (although now I am working more profitably as an engineer).

If someone wants to talk about real Physics (as it is taught in University and used by real scientists)... here I am.

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@maxdancona,

As a teenager I used to love playing around with simple Newtonian physics up to Hohmann Transfer orbits between earth and Mars and such.

Before home computers using log log books and adding machines and 20 inch round slide rulers.

Asimov wrote wonderful articles also dealing with physics at a level that did not burn out my brain cells.

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@maxdancona,

I was such a nerd I wrote a fast program for my TI-59 that plot my free fall velocity depending on my body position before the chute during my first jump would hopefully open up.

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@maxdancona,

It is a damn shame that Dean drive and decades late so call cold fusion was not for real.

At the very least the whole solar system would had been ours if they both had existence and we could had power a dean drive using a cold fusion pile.

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I was drawn to Physics because of the counter-intuitive. After all, things that are intuitive don't need a study of Physics. Newton's laws and orbits were cool. But I really fell in love with Galilean relativity (this is the first step in understanding Einstein, but was understood 400 years prior).

I love the science that it isn't intuitive, and yet is demonstrable through experiment and can be understood enough to make predictions. Once I was introduced to basic Relativity in High School by Mr. Smith (a brilliant but someone eccentric guy who generated his own power in the 1980s), I was hooked.

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@maxdancona,

Love the examples of the two Pioneers space probes generating strange date over a small very small fractions of their total acceleration vectors that for a time look like we we might need to adjust our total theory and understanding of gravity forces of all things due those tiny results. Taking into account such factors as the rate of the expanding universe

At the moment it look however like it was just the result of known thermal recoil forces on the probes.

Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly#:~:text=When%20all%20known%20forces%20acting,s2%20for%20both%20spacecraft.

We are living in a strange strange universe as far as common sense sometime is concern but sometime Newton win not Schrödinger and his cat.

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@BillRM,

There ain't nothing wrong with Schrödinger or his cat - sometimes.

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@roger,

roger wrote:

There ain't nothing wrong with Schrödinger or his cat - sometimes.

Schrodinger's cat presents a result of the Schrodinger wave equation that is supremely counter-intuitive.

The problem is that the pop-science version of this story is not exactly correct. You can't really understand the "paradox" with Schrodinger's cat without taking the time to understand the mathematics behind it, and unfortunately this is some pretty advanced math (i.e. partial differential equations).

Most of the pop-science discussions of quantum mechanics are nonsense (when you actually study quantum mechanics). Sometimes it is frustrating to me.

But people love to talk about it, and I have learned to just shut up even when they get it wrong. I got laid once because of this. Her: "Oh, you are a Physicist... Quantum mechanics is sooo spiritual. It says there is a connection between all life and crystal beings." Me: "yes, and the quantum spiritual energy between us is there. Can you feel it baby?"

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@maxdancona,

Most of the concepts behind quantum mechanics sound like fantasy in the everyday world view of humans.

Hell Einstein was uncomfortable with quantum physics himself.

Once more Newtonian physics seems to fit human thinking must better.

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