Help in choosing a suitable essay topic

[Losh]

I am in my second year of an undergrad degree in physics and we have to write a 2000-3000 word essay on a topic of our choice. This can be any aspect of physics or anything related to physics with sufficient physics content and should be written in a popular science style.

My problem is I can't decide what to write about. I am very indecisive and I haven't yet really developed a strong interest in one particular area as I find most of the things i have studied interesting.

I thought that perhaps seeing as it is meant to be more of an essay than a scientific paper I could write about something along the lines of say, counter-intuitive aspects of physics or maybe the relevance of classical physics to contemporary physics or something similar but I'm not really sure if it would be suitable. Everyone else I have spoken to seems to be doing stuff like black holes, quantum cryptography, the importance of the higgs particle etc and I just feel like I wouldn't really know where to start in looking for an interesting and original topic if I had to focus on one thing in particular.

Thanks in advance for any help and sorry for rambling...

 

[issacnewton]

I would suggest some topics of historical importance.

1) evolution of the concept of 'energy'- Here you will need to do some research about how the concept of 'energy' evolved through last 4-5 centuries. Its exciting topic I guess. Not many physicists know about such things

2)evolution of the concept of 'entropy'- Same can be said here. How the concept of
'entropy' came to be developed in 18th and 19th centuries.
How it changed our understanding of physics.

3)Emily Noether's theorem about relationship between the conservation laws and the invariance. You don't have to give lot of math here. Just a general outline about what this means. Try the Wikipedia link for the start
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem

I suggested the topics according to my tastes.