Physicists Definition and 431 Threads

No, not doubt as in questioning the capabilities or fact of the matter (as connoted in the western usage), but doubt as in general uncertainty / question (as I see from many Indian / Pakistani users, and grad students around my department!) Maybe this is just confirmation bias, but I notice a...

My question is basically for any type of engineer that works for an Aerospace company. Do you work with many physicists? I've recently become very interested in the growing commercial space industry, so I've been researching ways to insert myself into it. I'm a rising senior...

Do physicists suffer form a lack of personal time aside from their job? I've heard many times that theoretical physicists work many hours a day. But what about other type of physicsts such as experimental, etc.?

If so, what software are the likely to use?

Folks, I am reading some literature on QM. From what I understand QM can be used to great accuracy to predict the outcome of experiments and help to improve technology etc etc without having to worry to much about what it means i.e. the interpretations etc, i.e. the shut up and calculate...

I know you need a year of calculus linear algebra and differential equations and vector calculus, but I was what would be some other really useful math courses for physicists?

I would like it if you can recommend me textbooks in Engineering that are geared to people from the pure sciences. mainly on topics such as information theory, control theory, Solid and Fluid dynamics and Aeronautics & Aerodynamic Engineering. Thanks.

I‘m learning QFT and find it difficult, partly because I'm not familiar with group theory and Lie algebra, so I decide to tackle this during the holiday, any recommendation on the textbooks?

I love physics and physicists! Studying physics and being friends with physicists make me happy. just want to express my feelings.

http://www.livescience.com/13594-physics-particle-discovery-fermilab.html What new particle could it be?

Is there any "best" place (by place, I mean country or university or organization, whatever) for theoretical physicists? Is there advantage of doing research in a developed country like US to a developing country like India? If yes, what are they? Thanks!

I'm an aspiring physicist who is just starting out with freshman courses, so let me apologize in advance if I say something really dumb, or unintentionally offend someone. I found this forum several weeks ago, and in my reading of posts from mathematicians, I got the idea that "real math,"...

Ok, I really want to become a physicist that specializes in time travel. Like trying to make it real and things like that. What branch of physics would that come under? Thanks for answering!

No its not but why do they not hire physicists? All the jobs are for engineers and astrobiologists. Don't they need scientists for research? For like the Hubble telescope or the new James Webb telescope? If I'm wrong tell me but I was just doing research and found no info on it.

Just curious who everyone ranks as the best intellectual physicists in Australia

Is it mostly trying to coming up with equations, solving them, reading etc.? Do they use computers a lot or can the work they do be done simply with a pen and paper?

Hey Guys, I'm currently finishing up my B.S in Physics (going into the last semester of Junior year) and plan on getting a Masters in Computer Science concentrating on software engineering. I'm curious if anyone else has made a similar career choice and how it worked out. Also, which...

Hi I just came across this forum I am working as a physicist in a hospital. I have seen quite a few medical physicists during my career. I find that most physicists I saw are quite lack of inter-personal skills. That is quite contrary to my original expectation because I though people with...

Is there a perception of a "prestige" hierarchy among physicists? Just wondering. Are some fields (such as string theory) considered more prestigious than others? (like experimental condensed matter physics?) How does computational physics fit in the hierarchy? Of course, it certainly does...

"Physics is too hard for physicists" What does this quote from Hilbert mean? My Math professor said he can't stand how vectors are used in Physics. Being a first year student, I have no clue what this means yet. All of my friends at school are Math majors and have a certain distaste for...

I heard somewhere that companies are more likely to outsource engineers than people with physics/math degrees (on the masters level obviously), since the latter is more 'versatile' and adapts easier- this is totally illogical in my mind. In an industry job, don't engineers and physicists have...

vectors were introduced because they help physicists specify laws without reference to any particular coordinate system...can we then say that position vector is really a vector because after all it depends on where we choose our origin?

So I'm stil deciding whether or not I want to do a math/physics major (as opposed to just a physics major), and I was wondering if Number Theory is at all useful to physicists. I ask this because it's the easiest of the three classes I have left for my math major, which would make it perfect...

I would have to speculate they are: Albert Einstein Marie Curie Niels Bohr Erwin Schrödinger Wolfgang Pauli Paul Dirac Enrico Fermi Edwin Hubble Robert Oppenheimer Richard Feynman Julian Schwinger Sin-Itiro Tomonaga Chen Ning Yang Abdus Salam Steven Weinberg Sheldon Glashow...

I understand the main goal of all physicists is to unite quantum mechanics with general and special relativity so that all physical laws hold true on any scale. Does this mean that in the future possibly one equation may be able to describe everything?

OK, I was wondered about this. After I had read The Brief History of time, I thought I would be a good idea to write Sir Hawking an e-mail/letter/whatever. Than I realized, what an absurd idea that was. However, it makes me wonder if the top physicists get and fanmail. I didn't know where to...

After reading through the Dr. Mcninja series, I decided I needed a SUPER AWESOME SUPERHERO PHYSICIST to model myself after. Please list below all of the super heroes who are also Physicists (Fictional heroes preferably)

This made me laugh. See more at http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/"

Has anybody read these books? Goldbeetle

hm... maybe I have too much time on my hands... maybe I am just taking a leap into the unknown... maybe... maybe not... anyway, to get to the point, I want to ask the good people of PF: where can physicists (nuclear physicists and astrophysicists in particular) be found in the wild? where do...

Many of the most fundamental physics problems that theoretical physicists work with are really cool, but they are so abstract that sometimes it just feels that you are sitting with huge tomes/books and looking at details. How do you stay motivated? How do you bring back the taste for maths...

I'm taking modern physics class, and we have to do a semester long project over any physicist from the late 1800s on. My first thought was Tesla, but I want a not so obvious choice. So any suggestions would be appreciated. Just anybody that made somewhat significate contributions in any area of...

This appeared this week: Backward Causation in Complex Action Model --- Superdeterminism and Transactional Interpretations, Holger B. Nielsen, Masao Ninomiya (Submitted on 3 Aug 2010) "It is shown that the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics being referred back to...

I wonder if there is a profession in physics where physicists study time travel. If not, are there any research fields that correlate towards the study of time travel. I'm just curious.

Perhaps if we focus on the common philosophy of the great physicists as to what physics is and ought be, expressed in their simple words reflecting infinite wisdom, we will be better prepared to advance physics beyond the standard model. Equations are more important to me, because politics...

I know that every once in a while, people get upset over just about anything. For us Math and Physics majors, this may be even more serious since our goals (and I know I am being biased here) are greater than other professions say, medical students, even if our stress level are relatively...

What do physicists do over the whole day? What do engineers do over the whole day? What are the working hours for both like? Does an engineer get sent to faraway locations often (like get sent to another country or something to get things done)? I enjoy learning and doing physics problems...

It is suggested that I learn a computation oriented programming language for an physics internship which I hope to apply for soon. I'm curious; what is the most commonly used programming language in the physics community? I've heard that Fortran has been used extensively for a some time, but...

So, I have just finished my first year of college. I wasn't a physics geek in high school and only got interested in it during my Senior year. I became intrigued by the subject because for once, I found something that I had to work at and gave me a challenge, and I enjoyed this, thus I chose to...

Physicists are enabling increasingly large quantum systems to go into a superposition state, now reaching a stage involving many thousands of particles. From what i understand they seem confident they can carry on this trend indefinitely. However doesn't decoherence impose some limitation on how...

Radiotherapy physicists have become glorified technicians rather than clinical scientists Med. Phys. Volume 37, Issue 4, pp. 1379-1381 (April 2010) Published 9 March 2010

See another note on Medical Physics. The Ph.D. degree is a handicap in the job market for clinical medical physicists Med. Phys. Volume 27, Issue 12, pp. 2641-2643 (December 2000)

How in the heck do physicists know that spacetime was created at the big bang just by observing galaxies moving away from each other? Couldn't that mean that that's when the MASS was created?

G'day I was just wondering whether anyone could tell me the possible carrer paths of a medical physicist. Also what exactly do they do? Thanks

I can't even claim to understand 'spin' as a property (even after reading that big thread about it :P) but I'm sure with the amount of discussion that generated, this could be worth talking about http://www.ohio.edu/research/communications/spin.cfm

what is the average IQ of physicists? is it much higher than the average IQ of general population?

At my school, we apparently don't have a "math for physicists" type of course, which summarizes all the more advanced math that physicists need to know. The only requirement is: multivariate calc (finished), differential eqn (finished), linear algebra. I heard, however, that the grad level...

I'm a junior in high school, and planning on pretty sure I'm going into some kind of engineering or physics. I'm not a genius (much to my disappointment), but I really love physics and the whole concept of engineering. Of course, what I'm going to major in has changed only about 3 times, so...

I was told the other day that a great physicists would be given a problem and the first thing they would do is to attach it to a real life scenario, creating a mental image. Once they do that they do the math. My questions are: When they say create a 'mental image', is it like a mental...

Hello everyone, My name is David, a physics undergraduate student from Mexico. This is my last undergraduate year, so I've been seriously thinking about what to do next lately. I was searching around the web and found that there are plenty of jobs for physicists in the US. I was wondering, how...