The most misleading stereotypes about physics

[Pengwuino]

And to top it off there's the problem of general laziness! Between work, the gym and slacking off, I just don't have enough to fit everything it.

Maybe you should stop going to work.

 

[Moonbear]

Me on stage at 18 years old in my first teen bodybuilding competition, and then 2 years later and 30lbs heavier.

And Woolie thought the sisterhood was weakening! With guys like you around, we should have no problem recruiting new members! :tongue2:

 

[heartless]

Roll your eyes all you want. I choose to spend my spare time being healthy instead of eating chocolate and sitting on my butt:zzz: . Maybe being healthy isn't for everyone, but as for me, I most definitely will not fit into the stereotype, and will reach both my academic and fitness goals.

And here's my not-so-astonishing way of life, but my own individual passion that isn't for everyone.

Me on stage at 18 years old in my first teen bodybuilding competition, and then 2 years later and 30lbs heavier.

Oh boy, too much stereotype and movies. Almost everyone does some kind of sports no matter whether you study physics or mathematics or are a geek, a nerd or whatever. I play soccer and do biking everyday, some other people do basketball or weightlifting, after all, healthy life style is important. Being healthy lowers the risk of experiencing pain, something that everyone should rather avoid. If you're healthy, you possibly live longer, and if you live longer you can devote yourself more to reasearch and further studies. It's good to do sports, but I wouldn't rather make them the way of one's life. There's so much to discover, learn and experience here in the world, that indifference to science, may prevent you from getting them all, just my 7 cents.

//edit

wow, how long have you been practicing/doing weighlifting?

 

[franznietzsche]

Maybe you should stop going to work.

Thats the sad part, I don't even have to go anywhere. incidently, you are distracting me from it right now. I've got a paper sitting in front of me I need to read, and here I am replying to you. Its all your fault. Clearly.

 

[Pengwuino]

Thats the sad part, I don't even have to go anywhere. incidently, you are distracting me from it right now. I've got a paper sitting in front of me I need to read, and here I am replying to you. Its all your fault. Clearly.

That's what i do

 

[franznietzsche]

That's what i do

Jerk .

 

[SimplySolitary_]

That they're all guys.

Blah. I hate "Physics? But you're a girl, why would you go to school for Physics?" Or "More power to ya, sister!"
What the hell? Come on, now...

 

[Pengwuino]

My friend got that from her friends. She is the absolute antithesis of the stereotypical physics major. She's a high school dropout, she does drugs, she's smarter then pretty much everyone at her level in the department, she's hot by absolutely any standard, and she plans on getting her phd. None of us are really sure what's going on...

 

[Gokul43201]

Chemists do were white lab coats, universally.

Another misleading stereotype.

 

[Rach3]

Another misleading stereotype.

How so? Lab coats are a standard of safety - chemical spills you know. The majority of chemists I know wear them when doing research. What's misleading?

 

[Gokul43201]

Perhaps you've interacted only with a certain specific group of chemists. I've spent hundreds of hours in Chemistry labs and found that on average hardly about 20% of the folks are lab-coated. Lab coats are almost universal, however, in Industry (as opposed to Academia).

 

[Mk]

Lab coats are almost universal, however, in Industry

Another misconception. I thought you lived in India?

 

[Gokul43201]

Not for the last 5 years.

First person to 10 misconception wins!

 

[Curious3141]

I can tell you that proper Clinical Microbiology labs absolutely demand long white lab coats with full sleeves and a narrow cuff while working. It's a safety issue.

 

[kaos]

All physicists have einstein's hair. Or that most phycisists work in cosmology.

 

[neutrino]

Newton discovered gravity.

 

[Chi Meson]

I think one of them is the scientific method. That every scientist uses scientific method to test out his idea and do the experiment. Another one is that there is no gravity in space <- this one I heard personally from my history teacher.

Even the people at NASA keep referring to gravity in orbit as "microgravity." One astronaut interviewed a couple of years ago said that "the Earth's gravitational field is weakened to almost nothing out in orbit." (Obvious question would be: how did it stay in orbit?)

 

[Astronuc]

You're too optimistic. The general public isn't aware of the personalities, theories, observations, achievements, or goals of physics. We'd be lucky to even have a stereotype for our field...

:rofl: There are those who when they hear the term physics think of E=mc² and relativity, and the fact that they really don't understand it.

When I informed people whom I met for the first time that I was studying nuclear/astrophysics, I would invariably receive a response like - "Oooh! You must be smart." And then I would be asked to explain the latest theory on topics like Warp Drive, FTL, . . . . I suppose these days it's String Theory.

 

[Alkatran]

Newton discovered gravity.

I remember being confused as a child as to why people didn't know they fell down until Newton told them.

Then I found out, in university (finally), that the real break-through was the idea that stuff in space was ALSO falling in the same way. He combined the two.

 

[Moonbear]

I can tell you that proper Clinical Microbiology labs absolutely demand long white lab coats with full sleeves and a narrow cuff while working. It's a safety issue.

That's true...and the best way to tell a PhD from an MD is that the PhDs don't wear their lab coats to the cafeteria. :yuck: Lab coats are for lab safety, not for showing off your status in the cafeteria. They are only worn when working with hazardous materials (biological, chemical or radiological) to protect against spills, and are taken off as soon as you're done so you don't transfer anything that got onto the labcoat to someplace else outside the lab. Another difference between PhDs and MDs in the cafeteria are the MDs have pagers while the PhDs (and grad students) have timers clipped to their belts.

 

[neutrino]

I remember being confused as a child as to why people didn't know they fell down until Newton told them.

Then I found out, in university (finally), that the real break-through was the idea that stuff in space was ALSO falling in the same way. He combined the two.

I especially dislike those TV commercials (at least the ones I've seen) where a guy with long hair is sitting under a tree, an apple falls on his head and he exclaims gravity! (as if he discovered the phenomenon itself).

There's a joke that does the rounds in this part of the world (India).

Q. Why didn't an Indian discover gravity?
A. It's most likely that a coconut fell on his head.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Einstein's e=mc² lead to the creation of the atomic bomb.

 

[Pengwuino]

:rofl: There are those who when they hear the term physics think of E=mc² and relativity, and the fact that they really don't understand it.

When I informed people whom I met for the first time that I was studying nuclear/astrophysics, I would invariably receive a response like - "Oooh! You must be smart." And then I would be asked to explain the latest theory on topics like Warp Drive, FTL, . . . . I suppose these days it's String Theory.

I get that crap too, what's with people :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I wonder how people feel when i tell them i have no idea. What's even worse is when i do know a decent amount about something like that but i know any explanation is going to be over their head from the very beginning.

 

[Moonbear]

What's even worse is when i do know a decent amount about something like that but i know any explanation is going to be over their head from the very beginning.

I tell my students that that's probably the most difficult skill to learn as a scientist. It's easy to talk to other scientists about what you do, because they understand the terminology and have the background so you can omit things and they'll still keep up, but to explain what you do to a non-scientist in a way that does not confuse them and does not misinform them and does not patronize, that's really very challenging to learn to do. It's certainly something to practice though, because you will have to do it.

 

[Pengwuino]

I've learned one thing: Don't assume anything. Don't assume they know the most basic, simple, common facts about life. I was doing some presentation last semester at my university and what i realized in the end was that... not many people know atoms exist... even at a university level. I mean, i hated biology in high school but i would be embarassed if i didn't know the fundamentals from back then in biology. Is physics that much of a turn off? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

[selfAdjoint]

I tell my students that that's probably the most difficult skill to learn as a scientist. It's easy to talk to other scientists about what you do, because they understand the terminology and have the background so you can omit things and they'll still keep up, but to explain what you do to a non-scientist in a way that does not confuse them and does not misinform them and does not patronize, that's really very challenging to learn to do. It's certainly something to practice though, because you will have to do it.

There needs to be an intermediate level of explainer; some one who is very good with language, and sufficiently expert in the field that he doesn't make boners ( the explanatory books/articles should also be vetted by scientist in the field, a sort of sub-fusc peer review). There is no reason to expect - in fact regression on the mean drives our expectations against - that someone who is good in a science discipline will also be a talented explainer.

 

[Moonbear]

There is no reason to expect - in fact regression on the mean drives our expectations against - that someone who is good in a science discipline will also be a talented explainer.

Very few start out good at it, but the skill can be developed. I don't know what the format for grant proposals is in other science disciplines, but every one I've submitted has required a short explanation of the research for the non-scientific public. That's so that the funding agencies can continue to justify their budget and need to people who hold the purse strings, such as those in congress, who are not literate in science. We need to explain it well enough that they can understand why what we are doing is different from what's been done before, and why it's important.

It's also important if one's experimental results become newsworthy. A lot of scientists outright avoid publicizing interesting findings simply because they want to avoid the reporters who will botch the explanation. But, if you can learn to explain things to them in a way that they can digest, then the reports become a bit more accurate.

I don't actually think someone with only an "intermediate" understanding can do that as well as someone with the real expertise in a subject. I think it actually takes a greater level of understanding to know how to say it in a different way that doesn't change the fundamental meaning of what you're trying to convey. But, like I said, it does not come without practice.

 

[Pengwuino]

There needs to be an intermediate level of explainer; some one who is very good with language, and sufficiently expert in the field that he doesn't make boners ( the explanatory books/articles should also be vetted by scientist in the field, a sort of sub-fusc peer review). There is no reason to expect - in fact regression on the mean drives our expectations against - that someone who is good in a science discipline will also be a talented explainer.

It's also curious to note that scientists aren't that much more logical then the general public. One of my professors was telling me about studies that had been done and, contrary to what i assumed, scientists were almost as likely as the general public to act illogical in their daily lives. I guess we're all actually kinda prone to doing illogical things... It actually feels kinda depressing when you actually catch yourself doing something illogical.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

what i realized in the end was that... not many people know atoms exist... even at a university level.

You reminded me of a paper written by Sokal concerning his famous hoax in Social Text. It turns out that he was quoting another:

As C.P. Snow observed in his famous ``Two Cultures'' lecture 35 years ago:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had

 

[SpaceTiger]

How does the general public most misconstrue the personalities, theories, observations, achievements and goals of physics?

When people hear "astronomer", they think of a telescope monkey or horoscope reader. When people hear "astrophysicist", they think of Stephen Hawking or Einstein -- a math genius of some kind (in their perception). Neither is really an accurate depiction of your average astronomer or astrophysicist and, in professional circles, the words are often used interchangably.

The misconceptions can be useful, though. If I meet someone on a plane or bus and I want the conversation to be short, I just tell them I'm an astrophysicist (after they ask, of course). They're usually unsure of how to talk to me at that point.

 

[silkworm]

It's been my experience that the ignorance of physics by the average person leads them to live in a frightening world of action movie physics, where ridiculous and nonsensical things can happen all the time or are not accounted for - especially when operating a motor vehicle.

The image of physics needs to be dealt with but I don't know how to deal with it though. Math is seen is so difficult when it's really just spelling with numbers.

 

[Pengwuino]

It's been my experience that the ignorance of physics by the average person leads them to live in a frightening world of action movie physics, where ridiculous and nonsensical things can happen all the time or are not accounted for - especially when operating a motor vehicle.

I like that world! Maybe if i just put one 9mm bullet into the tire,the car will explode! Now that's cooooooooooooooooooooooool!

 

[franznietzsche]

When people hear "astronomer", they think of a telescope monkey or horoscope reader. When people hear "astrophysicist", they think of Stephen Hawking or Einstein -- a math genius of some kind (in their perception). Neither is really an accurate depiction of your average astronomer or astrophysicist and, in professional circles, the words are often used interchangably.

The misconceptions can be useful, though. If I meet someone on a plane or bus and I want the conversation to be short, I just tell them I'm an astrophysicist (after they ask, of course). They're usually unsure of how to talk to me at that point.

When I was working last summer, one of my coworkers asked me what I was studying. When I said I planned to go into astrophysics the first thing out of their mouth was "Oh, is that like astrology?" I wanted to slap 'em so hard...

 

[SpaceTiger]

When I was working last summer, one of my coworkers asked me what I was studying. When I said I planned to go into astrophysics the first thing out of their mouth was "Oh, is that like astrology?" I wanted to slap 'em so hard...

Wow, that's the first I've heard of someone confusing astrophysics and astrology. So far, I've only seen that confusion with astronomy.

 

[franznietzsche]

Wow, that's the first I've heard of someone confusing astrophysics and astrology. So far, I've only seen that confusion with astronomy.

I was actually taken off guard by it, I really wasn't expecting a response like that, even from a person working in a pizza delivery place. All I was able to say at the time was 'Not really...' and kinda dropped the subject and went back to work.