I'm thinking of entering the field of Theoretical Physics

[JohnApp]

First off, I'd like to introduce myself as this is my first post. My name is John, I'm 17, unemployed and science/technology has kept me entertained and happy for most of my life.

With that said, I have a few questions.

The first one is for the physicists (w/ a job) on this forum. What's a typical day like for you at work? It is my understanding that physicists who do not enjoy their work are not cut out for it.

The second is for students. What's a typical day like at your college/university?

I'll think of some more later, but that's all for now.

Thanks ahead of time for your replies.

 

[sol66]

Well, I am a physics student doing research for a theoretical biophysics professor. For the first question of being a theoretical physicist ... you can go down two roads... computational physics or pure theoretical physics. Anything that you try to simulate using a computer or predict without an experimental apparatus is considered theoretical work. You should be extremely comfortable with programing and such, as when you get up into the higher physics everything is solved numerically (by computer) because none of the equations you need to model a system is solvable in closed form (or exactly). In other words you can only approximate a solution for a modeled system.

Usually these computational physicists are trying to solve problems or develop ideas for which there are no experimental results for. For instance there is a theoretical professor at my school who proposed a new mechanism to build more accurate atomic clocks and then he uses code to approximate what would happen with his proposed scheme.

As for the other kind of theoretical physicist, you are basically a pure mathematician trying to find new models that can account for stuff like dark matter and such that unifies. Those are standard model theorist, and they also do a lot of computational computing. If you go into theory, expect to become programmer.

As for the student end of college... I go to class, go home, and do my homework. The first two years are extremely easy, but then when you go into the upperdivision level courses, it becomes night and day ... things in physics aren't nearly as intuitive and you'll have to learn how to use tools without know how they function. You'll also need to develop new ways of understanding material such as abstract vectors and tensors ... so on and so forth. Once you get into physics such as quantum mechanics, you can no longer visualize what is happening and you need to find a new way to understand the material. This is what you have to look forward to.