Galteeth said:
I am a "lay" person. I understand that I lack the mathematics knowledge necesary to fully understand advanced concepts in physics. Nevertheless, I find theoretical physics fascinating, and want to learn more. I have learned much from reading this board, and then using what i have read as a jump-off to look more deeply into topics. It is possible to have a general understanding of something (like relativity for example) without knowing all the specific math.
Do the physicists here find it frustrating when people are looking for non-techinal answers?
EDIT: There are also ALOT of misconceptions about physics amongst the general public! Even amongst science teachers!
Yes, and No.
First of all, I do a lot of outreach program, and I also host many "tours" by students and general public to the facility that I work in. I've enjoyed interactions with the "lay person" a lot, so much so that I've volunteered my time as much as I can for such causes. Our Open House at Argonne last month was a tremendous success, and I think both the scientists and the public got a lot out of such event. So no, in these cases, I don't mind them asking such questions. After all, it is their opportunity to get answers directly from the experts without having them reported by another person in the media. In my opinion, the more the general public get access to the experts, the better informed they will be.
The "No" part is when the "lay person" either already has an "agenda" or a particular point of view about certain things stuck in his/her head. This is worse when the question isn't that easy to answer mainly because it requires a lot of "prerequisites" to explain something clearly. The issue of the LHC and "catastrophic black hole" is one example that I can think of. I've had people who clearly want to know about this, and I've had others who had already made up their minds that physicists are going to destroy the world, no matter what answer I gave them. The latter annoys me mainly because I've just wasted my time and effort for nothing. I can't even carry a rational discussion with them. If this was a disagreement between physicists, I could at least argue something based on physics grounds. But how does one do that with a lay person when you know it will go well over his/her head?
The other thing that often annoys me is when a lay person gets "defensive" when I come back and ask him/her to clarify the question. For example, the question "Is the electron real?" (or whatever entity of the month is) will always get a response from me with another question "What do you mean by real? Is your mother real? What criteria do you use to know that she's real?" Inevitably, someone gets annoyed by that as if I'm evading the question, whereas all I'm trying to understand is to what extend does this person even understands his/her own question, and whether he/she has a set of criteria or a set of entities that has already been accepted as being "real". My approach has always been to use what that person knows, at the level that he/she knows, and use that as the foundation to explain and answer the question. So if this person says "My mother is real because such and such", then you can use that criteria to make a comparison with how we know about the properties of an electron. Knowing what the question is is one of the most important aspect of physics, because we need to clearly define what we are trying to seek the answer to. It is how many revolutionary aspect of physics came about, when we realize that our questions in certain situation simply make no sense, or invalid, and we must redefine them to learn more.
Interestingly enough, this last part is also the http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10364928-52.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0"! Read the last part of the article:
"The most important thing to get straight is the question you're trying to ask in the first place," Hyneman said. "It seems like a simple thing, but it's hard to get to that point and, a lot of times now, we're spending much more time defining that question before we do anything else."
So this isn't unique to physics, but rather a characteristics of trying to get answers out of a complex idea or situation.
Zz.
