Senjai said:
Honestly, i know that physicists don't just "do homework and tests."
Well, that's what your question implied. Please note: the only physicists you've met so far have been
teachers and that
is what teachers do. But they are the
only scientists and engineers who spend most/all of their time doing the same problems over and over (though professors tend to do other things than just teach...).
The question was I just didn't fully understand how they do what they do, and even how they do it. I'm sure there is a vast amount of unanswered questions. But how do you find one that you could possibly think to solve, how do you choose?
Someone intending to be a research physicist first spends years learning all they can learn about physics. In doing so, they learn where the "edge" is and once you knwo where the edge is, you can decide based on need and personal preference what part of that edge you want to try to push beyond.
It's like what we tell crackpots here who say 'you have to think outside the box' - in order to properly do that, you have to learn where the box is. Real physicists spend years learning about the box before trying to push their way out of it.
The only question I asked that I didn't receive an answer for was in relation to Newton's second law. As described it defined how acceleration is affected after a force has been applied to a mass. I asked what a force is, and apparently there is no definition to what a force is, because we don't know what they are. Just that they can be a push, pull, a frictional force, normal, etc. But at the same time it's an unanswered question that i don't ever see being solved. At least with the knowledge i have. I know there is much unanswered and a few who get lucky with discoveries but i don't understand how you'd find something worth researching that you know you'll progress.
Actually, it just sounds to me like you have a physics teacher who doesn't have enough of a grasp of physics to answer questions beyond what the syllabus covers...
That's a topic you should explore in the classical physics forum, though.
And in terms of repetitive calculations I'm talking about more of the engineering side of things, Nuclear engineers doing same old calculations etc.
Well for an engineer (I'm an engineer), the calculations done day to day are similar, but the particulars of each problem are different. For some people (I suspect for physicists...), that might seem too repetitive or limiting, but then there aren't a whole lot of jobs where every day is a completely different experience.