CHAPTER 1?

• Physics is done with concepts which are at the same time highly specific and unambiguous, yet generally highly abstract. That makes grasping the basic concepts one of the main challenges of learning physics. Of course it goes without saying that when any term from physics is used in everyday life or in the communications media, it will generally be used completely incorrectly and meaninglessly.

• Science is probably the most completely misunderstood of all human activities. The majority of people have not even the vaguest concept of what scientists do or how science works. In science we still of necessity use an apprentice system. In graduate school you work for an established, successful scientist and you watch what what he does and he watches what you do, and at the end you have successfully done a piece of publishable, creditable research. Increasingly the majority of science graduate students in the US are foreign born. Check this out.



• Physics consists of the set of laws and descriptions that work for the most fundamental processes of the universe. Physics works at every known level, from the tiniest pieces of atoms to the largest components of the universe, and the entire universe itself!

• The language of physics is mathematics. Mathematics is unique in being both a language and a formal system of logical deduction. Once you have laws of nature stated in general mathematical forms, you can manipulate and transform to your heart's content, often finding new laws that generalize or specialize earlier ones. The word “theory” in physics just means mathematical description. A theory of gravity is a set of laws that generally describe all gravitational processes.






• Physicists can work on anything: cells, molecules, atoms, nuclei, quarks, stars, galaxies, the entire universe. Some physicists mainly do experiments, some mainly try to figure out new laws, and others do both.



• Physicists use units and dimensions that are often very, very far from the pre-scientific measures still preserved in everyday life.



• Every process seen in nature at every level is described by physics.








• PSEUDOSCIENCE!  What the communications media and everyday life present in place of real science is a fake science based on superstition and failure to investigate.  Classic example: the dog that mysteriously knows when its owner is coming home... As long as pseudoscience has such an overwhelming appeal there is no room for reporting on real science news. As a parallel theme real scientists are consistently depicted by the media as out-of-touch, with no common sense, probably mentally ill, and not sympathetic to human needs.





• Science creates technology: For example in the late 1950s nuclear physicists realized they needed a small dedicated computer to take data in experiments. Such computers did not exist. A company called DEC promptly produced them, the first being installed in 1960. All personal computers evolved from this beginning. In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee developed a means by which physicists working at CERN could view a magazine-like page on the internet, giving continuously-updated information about the status and results of their experiments. He had created the World Wide Web, web pages and web browsers, as well as found a use for html.
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