Physics FAQs

What is physics?

What is the difference in the different levels of physics?

What do people do by majoring in physics?

What is physics?

According to dictionary Physics is ‘study of matter and energy’
Explanation of day to day observations like ‘why is sky blue, why does rainbow have 7 colors, why does food heated in microwave has some cold spots, ……. how do the household appliances work, and reasons behind some failures like Challenger disaster, Tacoma bridge collapse………
According to an author, ‘it’s a game played against nature’ and I say nature always wins.
An approximation to try to fit nature in a container of appropriate models using concepts, and math.
A philosophy
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What is the difference in the different levels of physics?

Imagine a story of Flintstone told in newspaper cartoon, and on TV cartoon, then in motion picture. And then maybe in an interactive movie.

Same story but you get more and more close to reality. Physical concepts, General Physics and Physics with calculus all have same concepts but higher and higher level of math is used to model the situations. Complexity of problems increases, as you get closer to the reality. Higher and higher level of math takes you closer and closer to the reality.

Imagine you have an object, which has shape, which is indescribable. And you have only a cubical box so that only part of the object can fit in it. Next you cut corners of the box to match the shape of the box. More and more you cut it, it becomes closer and closer to the shape of the object. Reshaping your box according to the shape of the object by using higher and higher level of math takes you closer and closer to the reality.

What do people do by majoring in physics?

Teach
Research
Work in industry as an engineer
Work in any field that requires critical thinking, decision making such as even financial analysis
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Contact Information:428- 8205, Madhuri Bapat
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Send comments to madhuri.bapat@eac.edu. Last modified Friday, July 1, 2005.