How long does it take to become a physics expert?

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The discussion revolves around a newcomer to a physics forum expressing awe at the advanced knowledge of other members, particularly in general relativity and quantum mechanics. The experienced members reassure the newcomer that understanding complex topics takes time and that many have years of study and professional experience. They emphasize that the learning process is gradual and encourage asking questions without intimidation. The conversation highlights the importance of persistence in learning and the idea that expertise often stems from a long journey of study rather than innate intelligence. Members also humorously discuss their own learning experiences, acknowledging that even seasoned individuals often feel overwhelmed by the vastness of physics knowledge. The thread concludes with a light-hearted exchange about the nature of intelligence and knowledge, reinforcing the idea that everyone is on their own learning path.
BillytheBob
I am pretty new to these forums, and although I enjoy physics, I have only 1 year or experience with it in high school (although I will have two more before I graduate).
You people leave me speechless though. Maybe it is just because a lot of GR or quantum stuff is hard to understand without proper background, but nonetheless.. you people all sound like PhD's from Harvard.

I guess the real question is, how long did you study physics before you could really understand most of what is in these forums.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
We breastfed Physics! :biggrin:

Now, the the real REAL question is, what's your favorite fish?
 
I think you're confusing knowledge with intelligence. I'm not saying folks here are not smart, I'm saying that most of us are a LOT older than you and have had time to use whatever brainpower we have to learn stuff. You'll get there. Don't be intimidated.

(P.S. hint --- pick a small fish :smile:)
 
BillytheBob said:
I am pretty new to these forums, and although I enjoy physics, I have only 1 year or experience with it in high school (although I will have two more before I graduate).
You people leave me speechless though. Maybe it is just because a lot of GR or quantum stuff is hard to understand without proper background, but nonetheless.. you people all sound like PhD's from Harvard.

I guess the real question is, how long did you study physics before you could really understand most of what is in these forums.
Like phinds said, many of us are older with a couple of decades or more of professional experience with about another decade or so of university experience. Many here are scientists (mathematicians, physicists, etc), engineers or technologists, as well as business folks, as well as students in high school and university. There is an amazing spectrum of scientific and technical experience here, as well as being geographically (internationally) broad.

Stick around, read as much as possible, and ask challenging questions.
 
BillytheBob said:
I guess the real question is, how long did you study physics before you could really understand most of what is in these forums.
61 years and counting.
 
BillytheBob said:
I guess the real question is, how long did you study physics before you could really understand most of what is in these forums.

I'll tell you when I'm able to. :biggrin:

On a more serious note, I would say a vast majority of what is posted on this forum is understandable with just a year or 2 of real study. Most people outside of the field have effectively 0 knowledge of physics, so it's extremely easy to find things going over your head. I'm sure I'd be dumbfounded if a music major 1 year into his studies started talking to me about music theory simply because I have almost no understanding of it myself.
 
IMO You don't notice the "how long" aspect of it all if you really enjoy learning w/e it is you want to whether its QFT, GR etc. at least until pengy comes around and ruins the fun. Oh the horror. But yeah its all gradual and I don't think you can ever understand 100% everything here; there is too much to learn =D.
 
It's not even just that we're smart, most of us are world-class athletes as well. Around 60% are models.
 
Over the years, as I study and teach more and more physics, I feel stupider and stupider, because I learn about the existence of more and more topics that I don't know anything about, and realize that I'll never have time to learn even a small fraction of them.
 
  • #10
I'm not smart, I just like math :biggrin:

Seriously, it's pretty easy to become good at something if you enjoy it that much.
 
  • #11
KingNothing said:
It's not even just that we're smart, most of us are world-class athletes as well. Around 60% are models.

60% of us make models, not are models.
 
  • #12
micromass said:
Seriously, it's pretty easy to become good at something if you enjoy it that much.

Couldn't have said it better myself. People always get good at the things they like doing. Unfortunately my uncle really likes being lazy.
 
  • #13
You have to realize how "answering questions" on this forum actually works. If somebody reads 100 threads, doesn't understand anything about 80 of them, doesn't post anything to another 15 because there are already some good answers there, and posts to the remaining 5, what YOU see is somebody who posted 5 answers that "look like they came from a Harvard Ph.D". You just see the tip of the iceberg, not the sea of ignorance that it's floating in!
 
  • #14
KingNothing said:
Couldn't have said it better myself. People always get good at the things they like doing. Unfortunately my uncle really likes being lazy.

HEY ... don't knock lazy. It's one of my best things.:smile:
 
  • #15
jtbell said:
Over the years, as I study and teach more and more physics, I feel stupider and stupider, because I learn about the existence of more and more topics that I don't know anything about, and realize that I'll never have time to learn even a small fraction of them.

And isn't it wonderful ... we'll never get bored !
 
  • #16
AlephZero said:
You have to realize how "answering questions" on this forum actually works. If somebody reads 100 threads, doesn't understand anything about 80 of them, doesn't post anything to another 15 because there are already some good answers there, and posts to the remaining 5, what YOU see is somebody who posted 5 answers that "look like they came from a Harvard Ph.D". You just see the tip of the iceberg, not the sea of ignorance that it's floating in!

Aw come on here ... you're giving away our secrets.:smile:
 
  • #17
Oh wow, I thought it was only me who didn't understand 95% of what is posted here.
 
  • #18
first year students always ask me this question, normally I just point out the things they can do better than I do and say we are all good at something :)
 
  • #19
QuarkCharmer said:
Oh wow, I thought it was only me who didn't understand 95% of what is posted here.

That applies only to regular posts; we don't understand 99.93% of what the penguin comes up with.
 
  • #20
I usually just point out that what I'm good at, I've been LEARNING for about 8 years now.
Physics is quite repetitive when you're learning it (in a GOOD way), it really helps strengthen the basics.
In physics 2 you study basic EM waves.
In DiffEq+PDE you study the solutions to the wave equation.
In optics you study light waves.
Then you study sound waves in acoustics.
You take a solid state course, where you learn about phonon vibrations in a lattice(waves).
Then you do Mechanics and learn about SH oscillators (waves of a box on a spring).
Then you take ElectroMagnetism and study more EM waves.
Then you finally get to Quantum Mechanics and study particle waves.
Luckily in Thermo+Stat Mech you don't study any waves really... but its thermo and stat mech...
Then you get to graduate school and take a Jackson EM course, and learn about much much harder waves, same in grad QM, same in Quantum Field Theory.
And so on and so forth...

Now, of course in some of these courses wave mechanics only plays a small portion, but EVERY YEAR you use the stuff you learned prior only with an increase in difficulty, and a change in application. While that might almost sound boring, it almost forces you to master the mathematics from the ground up to a very technical level.

Its never a new course where the math is new, the topic is new, and you're completely lost. Everything builds on what you learn previously, and constantly adds new tools and techniques to your repertoire.
 
  • #21
Google's smart, I'm just a conduit.
 
  • #22
I don't know about anyone else here but I mostly just make it up as I go along. ;-)

Welcome to PF.
 
  • #23
TheStatutoryApe said:
I don't know about anyone else here but I mostly just make it up as I go along. ;-)
And I steal from you, so I don't have to make it up.
 
  • #24
KingNothing said:
It's not even just that we're smart, most of us are world-class athletes as well. Around 60% are models.
I think that the percentage of models might be higher if most of us didn't like beer as much as we do. I don't see how Monique and MIH manage.

I am a world-class athlete, however. I hope to see darts included in the 2016 Olympics. Training is a grind, but I'll make the sacrifice.
 
  • #25
phinds said:
I think you're confusing knowledge with intelligence.
Yep :D
I find that focusing on intelligence prevents me from gaining knowledge. I'm in my first year of physics and am still pretty unfamiliar with a lot of what is said here. I may read a bit, but I prefer to avoid posting about things until I learn more (unless I am asking for help of course). There's not much I can contribute now...but maybe 10 yrs down the line I'll be a force to reckon with :devil:

For now I've also given up on trying to keep Peng Peng in line ...but I've become pretty skilled with a whip in the process
[URL]http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs38/f/2008/319/8/8/Emoticon_Whip_by_Ace0fredspades.gif[/URL]
 
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  • #26
BillytheBob said:
I guess the real question is, how long did you study physics before you could really understand most of what is in these forums.

I had to study physics for hundreds... literally hundreds... of minutes before I understood everything about the universe.

So, don't get discouraged.
 
  • #27
KingNothing said:
Around 60% are models.

Modeling is a little bit like knowing a whole lot about a little bit. Everyone is good at something.

I'm an ear model.

[PLAIN]http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1271/bobshatro5.jpg
 
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  • #28
HeLiXe said:
For now I've also given up on trying to keep Peng Peng in line ...but I've become pretty skilled with a whip in the process
[PLAIN]http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs38/f/2008/319/8/8/Emoticon_Whip_by_Ace0fredspades.gif[/QUOTE]

Helixe is mean! :(

Or kinky, I'm not sure.
 
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  • #29
Can't resist the hat BobG! :biggrin:
 
  • #30
DRIZZLE!

hai.
 
  • #31
drizzle said:
Can't resist the hat BobG! :biggrin:

Knock it off with the puns or you'll be incapacitated.
 
  • #32
I used to be a model for the Half Off Clothing Company just before they went out of business.
 
  • #33
Jimmy Snyder said:
I used to be a model for the Half Off Clothing Company just before they went out of business.

I was a model for dark matter distribution in the universe before I was determined to be incomplete.
 
  • #34
FlexGunship said:
Knock it off with the puns or you'll be incapacitated.

There are capacitors too! :biggrin:
 
  • #35
drizzle said:
There are capacitors too! :biggrin:

facepalm_bear.jpg

(Source: http://fail.brm.sk/)
 
  • #36
Pengwuino said:
Helixe is mean! :(

Or kinky, I'm not sure.

>_> none of these describe me :biggrin:
 
  • #37
Jimmy Snyder said:
I used to be a model for the Half Off Clothing Company just before they went out of business.

Ah, I remember that store - especially the half off T-shirts.

half+shirt+copy.jpg
 
  • #38
A person's true knowledge is inversely proportional to their own estimation of their knowledge. This is a useful law in practice. When someone says they are smart, you take the inverse and then you know the level of their true knowledge. The reason for this is that the more you learn, the more you find out exists that you don't know about.

With that in mind, I would say that we here at PF are really dumb (we just happen to know a little bit more in physics than the next guy.)
 
  • #39
chrisbaird said:
The reason for this is that the more you learn, the more you find out exists that you don't know about.

Until you become as smart as me, then you actually do know everything. :approve:
 
  • #40
chrisbaird said:
A person's true knowledge is inversely proportional to their own estimation of their knowledge. This is a useful law in practice. When someone says they are smart, you take the inverse and then you know the level of their true knowledge. The reason for this is that the more you learn, the more you find out exists that you don't know about.

With that in mind, I would say that we here at PF are really dumb (we just happen to know a little bit more in physics than the next guy.)

I think I see what you're saying.

\frac{1}{smart} goes to zero as "smart" gets bigger. In other words, as people claim a larger and larger value for "smart", the closer and closer they will get to knowing nothing. :biggrin:

Not sure if there's any empirical evidence to support that, but it sounds nice.
 
  • #41
BobG said:
Ah, I remember that store - especially the half off T-shirts.

half+shirt+copy.jpg
:smile:
 
  • #43
BillytheBob:

Hold on to your curiosity.

Don't be in awe of those of us who seem to know more than you do: you may very well wind up proving us wrong.

Never lose your fear of being humiliated: that fear motivates you to clear and complete reasoning.

Never let the fear of humiliation prevent you from speaking out: getting it wrong is a major learning tool.

Just keep at it!
 
  • #44
FlexGunship said:
Until you become as smart as me, then you actually do know everything. :approve:

:smile:

Reminds me of a saying we had in my SF club about 30 years ago, used against mundanes: "You people who think that you know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."
 
  • #45
I'm an example of what I said.

Within the last few hours, I was humiliated on another thread.

Do I give up?

NO!

I try harder, and get back to basics.

Why am I so smart?

Right now, I don't feel so smart, let me tell you!

But, by endeavoring to learn from my mistakes, I hope to become smarter than I am right now.
 
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  • #46
I'm not so smart as I think I am.
 
  • #47
DoggerDan said:
I'm not so smart as I think I am.

Neither am I...if I don't study I'm dumb as a door tack.
Come to think of it I'm still dumb as a door tack even after I study :-p
 
  • #48
HeLiXe said:
Neither am I...if I don't study I'm dumb as a door tack.
Come to think of it I'm still dumb as a door tack even after I study :-p

I use homework helping to finally learn stuff myself. :P

1. Helper explains stuff to student. Student does not understand.
2. Helper explains stuff again to student. Student does not understand.
3. Helper explains stuff for the third time. Helper finally understands the material. Student still doesn't understand.
 
  • #49
I like Serena said:
I use homework helping to finally learn stuff myself. :P

1. Helper explains stuff to student. Student does not understand.
2. Helper explains stuff again to student. Student does not understand.
3. Helper explains stuff for the third time. Helper finally understands the material. Student still doesn't understand.

I think he's got! By George he's got it!
 
  • #50
By losing friends and alienating people. Also reading
 

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