Fake News, Data, and the Need to Check Sources During and even after the recent US election campaign, numerous reports of fake or misleading news were…

Why Study Physics? If you don’t plan to become a scientist or an engineer, is there a good reason to study physics?  I say, “Yes,” because knowing…

Series linksPart 1: Introduction to Astrophotography Part 2: Intermediate Astrophotography Part 3: Advanced AstrophotographyMotivation "I’ve…

We are pleased to share with you an interview with PF Science Advisor and one of our founding members: DrChineseWho is DrChinese and share some early…

We are pleased to introduce David J. Griffiths, one of the most successful physics textbook authors. Odds are if you studied physics in college, you've…

Summer is almost over, but the fun doesn't have to stop! Take a look at the photos below and see if you can identify them.  Post your score in the comment…

On Hardware Quality Designing Quality vs Testing It is impossible to test quality into a product. Quality must be designed into the product. Production…

Introduction We occasionally have students ask for help on software, "My software is perfect, but it doesn't work!" Your software is never perfect. My…

We are pleased to introduce Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech specializing in cosmology and quantum mechanics. He has a…

We are pleased to introduce Peter Krautzberger. Peter is a manager for MathJax, the technology behind the display of equations on Physics Forums. "The…

DrClaude is a mentor at Physics Forums!What brought you to Sweden from Canada? Life, the Universe, and Everything. While in Canada, I was offered the…

In any forum where science is discussed, there will always be people who have a great new personal theory and can't understand why no one else is interested…

Are most visible stars brighter than the Sun? A couple of weeks back, a thread was started about whether or not most of the stars we see at night are…

Have you been keeping up with reading each PF Insight? Let's find out! Every question's answer can be found in a PF Insight. Hint links are included if…

A monographic substitution cipher works by replacing individual characters of plaintext with corresponding characters of ciphertext. It is perhaps the…

Can you give us a brief history of berkeman? I grew up in a military family (my dad was an Army colonel), so we moved all over the place when I was a…

Think you know your famous science quotes? Let's find out in this 12 question quiz. There are no prizes, so it doesn't pay to Google. Try your best on…

Background: textbook accounts Look in your standard cosmology textbook (in my case, the closest one at hand is Barbara Ryden's Introduction to Cosmology)…

Science today is incredibly complex. Anyone who ever did scientific research knows that, but many in the general public seem to be completely unaware of…

Ice is the solid form of water, and understanding its basic properties (freezing point, density, crystal structure) helps explain everything from why it…

Many people ask how an airplane wing works, and several answers are commonly given. You might have even seen vigorous arguments between proponents…

Motivations for creating the series I came to Physics Forums originally to read ZapperZ’s thread about becoming a physicist back in 2013. It was one…

Have Scientists Seen an Electron? Why Seeing Isn't Enough This article is not about literally seeing a single electron with your eye; it addresses the…

I was perusing the Nature Nanotechnology website today when I came across an interesting article by Funke and Dietz, called "Placing molecules with Bohr…

What is the PF's policy on Lorentz Ether Theory and Block Universe?Debates about the superiority or "truth" of modern Lorentz Ether Theory (LET) and…

The balloon analogy uses pennies glued to an inflating balloon to show two ideas from modern cosmology: that unbound regions of the universe expand roughly…

Procrastination is a predictable pattern of avoidance behavior, not simply laziness or poor time management. It splits into two main types: anxious procrastination,…

Zero is neither positive nor negative, is defined as the additive identity so that x + 0 = x for every number x, and produces 0 when multiplied by any…

Do photons have mass? The quick answer: NOCommon source of confusion However, this is where it gets a bit confusing for most people. This is because,…

Figure showing links between ballistic pressure waves and traumatic brain injury.Many physics majors believe that pursuing a Ph.D. in…

While I served on the math faculty of the US Air Force Academy, we invited numerous cadets to participate in self-funded research…

1. Heat, Work, Internal Energy, and Kinetic Energy "If heat is the motion of molecules, why isn't it Kinetic Energy?"In everyday use, we may think…

These are some of the best physics blogs, updated regularly, written by some of the top minds. The feeds are updated on page refresh, so bookmark this…