How much do you know about Physics?

Overview of Physics: From Ancient Astronomy to Modern Theories

• Physics is the natural science of matter, energy, and force, with the goal of understanding how the universe behaves.

• Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and it intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research.

• The word "physics" originates from the Ancient Greek "knowledge of nature."

• Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences, with early civilizations having a basic awareness of the motions of celestial bodies.

• Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period, with pre-Socratic philosophers proposing ideas verified by reason and observation.

• Islamic scholarship inherited Aristotelian physics from the Greeks and developed it further, especially placing emphasis on observation and the scientific method.

• Classical physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover the laws of physics.

• Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

• The scientific method employs a priori and a posteriori reasoning and the use of Bayesian inference to measure the validity of a given theory.

• The philosophy of physics involves issues such as the nature of space and time, determinism, and metaphysical outlooks.

• Physics deals with a wide variety of systems, although certain theories are used by all physicists, including classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and special relativity.

• These central theories are important tools for research into more specialized topics, and any physicist is expected to be literate in them.Overview of Physics: Fields, Theories, and Applications

• Physics is a branch of natural science concerned with the study of matter, energy, and their interactions.

• Classical mechanics, acoustics, optics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism are some of the major branches of physics.

• Classical mechanics deals with bodies in motion and may be divided into statics, kinematics, and dynamics.

• Acoustics is the study of sound production, transmission, and reception, while optics is concerned with the study of light and its properties.

• Thermodynamics deals with the relationships between heat and other forms of energy, while electromagnetism is the study of the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

• Modern physics is concerned with matter and energy under extreme conditions or on a very small or large scale.

• Physics is closely related to mathematics, as it provides a language to describe natural phenomena and to organize and formulate experimental results.

• Physics experiments provide numerical data, with their units of measure and estimates of the errors in the measurements.

• Applied physics is a general term for physics research intended for a particular use, such as developing new technologies or solving a problem.

• Physics covers a wide range of phenomena, from elementary particles to the largest superclusters of galaxies, and aims to describe these phenomena in terms of simpler ones.

• Contemporary research in physics can be broadly divided into nuclear and particle physics, condensed matter physics, atomic, molecular, and optical physics, astrophysics, and applied physics.

• The scientific method is used to test the validity of a physical theory, and progress in physics frequently comes about when experimental results defy explanation by existing theories, prompting intense focus on applicable modelling.Overview of Contemporary Physics

• Condensed matter physics is the largest field of contemporary physics, concerned with the "condensed" phases that appear whenever the number of particles in a system is extremely large and the interactions between them are strong.

• Condensed matter physics has a large overlap with chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology, and engineering.

• Astrophysics and astronomy are the application of the theories and methods of physics to the study of stellar structure, stellar evolution, the origin of the Solar System, and related problems of cosmology.

• Physical cosmology is the study of the formation and evolution of the universe on its largest scales, and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity plays a central role in all modern cosmological theories.

• The Big Bang model rests on two theoretical pillars: Albert Einstein's general relativity and the cosmological principle.

• Cosmologists have established the ΛCDM model of the evolution of the universe, which includes cosmic inflation, dark energy, and dark matter.

• Research in physics is continually progressing on a large number of fronts, and the Large Hadron Collider has already found the Higgs boson, but future research aims to prove or disprove the supersymmetry.

• In particle physics, the first pieces of experimental evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model have begun to appear.

• Many condensed matter experiments are aiming to fabricate workable spintronics and quantum computers.

• The discovery of neutrinos with non-zero mass has solved the long-standing solar neutrino problem, and the physics of massive neutrinos remains an area of active theoretical and experimental research.

• The nature of the major mysteries of dark matter and dark energy is currently ongoing research.

• Everyday phenomena involving complexity, chaos, or turbulence are still poorly understood, and complex physics has become part of increasingly interdisciplinary research.