Why do people think physics is so hard?

Moonbear

Then you don't know enough about any of those subjects yet to realize how challenging they are when you get beyond the simple, introductory material. Memorizing definitions is not adequate to understand any of those subjects. At the introductory level, physics is really easy too.

But, as others have already mentioned, everyone has their own individual talents. I find it incredibly hard to write anything that even comes close to what could be called poetry, but others can write beautiful poetry quite easily.

Schrodinger's Dog

What were Newton and Schrodinger then? The best physisists are often the best mathemeticians as well. Considering the nature of advanced physics I doubt you'll get far without being at least competent at maths.

For most people maths is hard, therefore they percieve physics which is mostly maths is hard. Some people are good at pure maths others excell at applying it, to be a good physisist requires both. The best and brightest go into physics anyway, if you look at testing: physics tops the academic performance ladder beating Engineering and maths into second and third place. So the brightest really do go into physics.

The most groundbreaking and well known theories of the 20th century have mostly been in the field of physics, with biology catching up later. Microprocessors and ICBM's are a direct consequence of physics.

Sojourner01

Most people don't 'think properly'. Being wantonly ignorant in school when the groundwork was being laid means that if most people were to sit in a physics lecture now they'd sit there and not take in a word that was said.

However, if you put these same people in an undergraduate lab, they'd probably do as well as some of the physics students.

pivoxa15

What do you mean by testing? What is the academic performance ladder? Is that a ranking between the students of the discipline or the professors? Can you provide evidence for it?

Alkatran

High school physics was one of my easiest classes. Not only did I 'get' it, the teacher spent the majority of class time talking about his financial ideas instead of physics.

Now chemistry, THAT was a decent class in high school. Excellent teacher.

leright

I am a physics major and find physics to be extremely challenging.

twisting_edge

Just wait until you get to the harmonics of an electron orbit. It's a little more challenging then.

Conceptual things I never had a problem with. That's where most people run into early troubles. But the math can get more than a little involved even if you have no problem with the concepts.

They probably focus more on numeric (computer-based) solutions for things like that now. When I went through it, it was a rather bizarre stew of differentials, abstract algebra, geometry, and linear equations. There'd be a few paragraphs every couple of chapters saying, essentially, "You can use a computer to do this sort of thing using the following techniques, but that's just for the lightweights who will fail any course based on this book in any case."

Admittedly, mine was a very theoretical program. I looked at the cirricula for some other schools and was sort of surprised at the number of continuous media, thermo and solid state courses most of them offered under physics. Most of that stuff was relegated to the school of engineering at my alma mater.

twisting_edge

I can't provide a link, but I remember a math grad student saying the same thing when I was a physics undergrad. "The theoretical physics guys have the highest IQ on average, but we [theoretical mathematicians] are right behind them on the list, and they wouldn't get anywhere without us to hand them the pencil." He was explicitly talking about IQ, which is probably the "testing" referred to here, as well.

It's not really surprising, given what IQ tests measure: the ability to quickly resolve abstractions. Of all the disciplines, physics and math certainly have the highest ratio of on-the-spot synthesis to memorization in my experience.

Schrodinger's Dog

It's testing from US universities, I've seen the table but perhaps an american might find it, funnilly enough I seem to remember history students came about 6th or 7th.

pivoxa15

I still think the best pure maths grad students are intellectually superior to the corresponding brilliant theoretical physics students. Maybe the tests are better adapated to people who have done a lot of physics than someone who has done only a lot of extremely abstract stuff.

Maybe you could try a hyperthetical experiment pay the best pure maths and theoretical physics academics 2 times as much salary for a year and get them to do the opposite work. Maths academics do physics and vice versa. At the end of the year you might find that the maths academics have accomplished more than their physics collegues doing maths. That is what I think anyway. One reason is that it's simply easier to learn physics than abstract maths. Although don't get me wrong, I think the 'real world' is extremely complicated but in physics they build models which is not as hard to understand as rigorous maths although a bit of creativity is needed to create these models.

cristo

How are you defining "theoretical physics"? As far as I'm aware, a lot of theoretical physics is rather abstract!

complexPHILOSOPHY

And loaded with pure mathematics, especially analysis.

Schrodinger's Dog

Are you a maths student by any chance?

All the great physisists of the 20th century also happened to be very competent if not brilliant mathemeticians too, simply put though the best and brightest go into physics, maths and engineering in that order? Perhaps it's the prestige of the subject?

Anyone who thinks philosophy is easy either it comes it at around 6th. Food for thought . And no I can't find the tables, I have seen them and I have tried though.

This is in the US other countries I have no idea?

Simply put though if you asked the mathemiticians and the physisists to vote for who they thought were the brightest, you'd get very predictable results.

IMO to be a good physicist you need not only at least competent maths skill but also imigination and visualisation skills. Plus you have to learn a stack load of technicle information, with maths it's the same but most people in maths are already skilled at maths or they wouldn't be there. The distinction is in the relation of real complicated maths to the real world and spotting were and how to apply maths. Mathemeticians maybe brilliant mathemeticians but they spend all their time doing only one thing: maths.

complexPHILOSOPHY

The pure mathematician could potentially be considered better at pure, abstract mathematics than a mathematical physicist, however, a pure mathematician probably doesn't know roughly even half as much physics as the physicist does (unless the mathematician engages in physics research), while the physicist might know as much if not more maths than the mathematician!

You claim that it is easy to learn physics as opposed to abstract mathematics but at a certain level (especially in theoretical physics), you have to first learn the abstract mathematics and then learn how that relates to the physics!

How do you think they 'construct' these models of reality? They use abstract formal logic systems such as mathematics. Mathematics does not represent an external reality, however, it can be used as a visuall language, to model physical phenomena. Theoretical physics today is highly mathematical, focused around rigorous proofs and hardcore analysis.

Perhaps my perception of the situation is slightly distorted.

-cP

pivoxa15

Perhaps I said too much in my last post. I am studying both pysics and maths and think they are both very challenging with maths even more. The main point I wanted to get across in my last post was "Maybe the tests are better suited to people who have done a lot of physics than someone who has done only a lot of extremely abstract stuff with no realtion to the external world."

Schrodinger's Dog, if you can't find the results could you find the test itself?

Schrodinger's Dog

The tests are the standard SAT's and the GPA(grade point averages) Mathemeticians tend to gain in maths GPA's though. But it's not really apt to compare GPA in two different subjects, essentially it was a combined statistical average of who dropped out who stayed in GPA's and SAT's. Plus some other factors.

J77

What do you base that on?