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Questions and Answers
What is the scientific study of matter, its motion, and behavior through space and time called?
What is the scientific study of matter, its motion, and behavior through space and time called?
- Physics (correct)
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Geology
A scientist who specializes in physics is known as a what?
A scientist who specializes in physics is known as a what?
- Geologist
- Physicist (correct)
- Biologist
- Chemist
Which of the following is NOT typically considered a branch of classical physics?
Which of the following is NOT typically considered a branch of classical physics?
- Thermodynamics
- Classical mechanics
- Quantum mechanics (correct)
- Electromagnetism
Which of the following fields studies the application of physics to stars and the solar system?
Which of the following fields studies the application of physics to stars and the solar system?
Which concept is a central component of modern cosmological theories?
Which concept is a central component of modern cosmological theories?
What is the study of matter, light, and matter interactions on the scale of single atoms and molecules called?
What is the study of matter, light, and matter interactions on the scale of single atoms and molecules called?
The study of the constituents and interactions of atomic nuclei is known as what?
The study of the constituents and interactions of atomic nuclei is known as what?
The study of macroscopic physical properties of matter is known as what?
The study of macroscopic physical properties of matter is known as what?
According to Aristotelian physics, what determined the speed at which objects fall?
According to Aristotelian physics, what determined the speed at which objects fall?
Which of the following is an application of physics in engineering?
Which of the following is an application of physics in engineering?
Flashcards
What is Physics?
What is Physics?
The scientific study of matter, energy, space, and time.
Early Astronomy
Early Astronomy
Civilizations with predictive knowledge of the movements of the Sun, Moon and stars.
Natural Philosophy
Natural Philosophy
The rejection of non-naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena.
Aristotle's Four Elements
Aristotle's Four Elements
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Islamic Scholarship
Islamic Scholarship
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Heliocentric Copernican Model
Heliocentric Copernican Model
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Classical Physics
Classical Physics
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Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity
Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity
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Particle Physics
Particle Physics
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The Scientific Method
The Scientific Method
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Study Notes
- Physics is the scientific study of matter, its motion, behavior, and fundamental constituents through space and time, including energy and force.
- Physics is a fundamental scientific discipline and one of the oldest academic disciplines.
- A physicist is a scientist who specializes in physics.
- Physics, chemistry, biology, and some mathematics branches were part of natural philosophy until the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century.
- Physics intersects with interdisciplinary areas like biophysics and quantum chemistry.
- New physics ideas often explain fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new research avenues in mathematics and philosophy.
- Advances in physics often enable new technologies.
- Electromagnetism, solid-state physics, and nuclear physics advances led to television, computers, appliances, and nuclear weapons.
- Thermodynamics advances led to industrialization, and mechanics advances inspired calculus.
- Early civilizations, such as the Sumerians, Egyptians, and the Indus Valley Civilization, had predictive knowledge of the Sun, Moon, and stars before 3000 BCE.
- Early astronomical observations, though often unscientific, laid the foundation for later astronomy.
- Western astronomy's origins trace back to Mesopotamia, with Western exact sciences descended from late Babylonian astronomy, according to Asger Aaboe.
- Egyptian astronomers showed knowledge of constellations and celestial motions in monuments.
- Greek astronomers later provided names for constellations visible from the Northern Hemisphere.
- Natural philosophy originated in Greece during the Archaic period (650 BCE – 480 BCE).
- Pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales rejected non-naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena.
- These philosophers proposed ideas verified by reason and observation.
- Atomism, proposed by Leucippus and Democritus, became correct about 2000 years later.
- Natural philosophy developed along many lines of inquiry during the classical period in Greece (6th, 5th and 4th centuries BCE) and in Hellenistic times.
- Aristotle (384–322 BCE) wrote a substantial treatise on "Physics" in the 4th century BC.
- Aristotelian physics was influential for about two millennia, mixing limited observation with logical deductive arguments.
- Aristotle's approach didn't rely on experimental verification and is superseded today.
- Aristotle explained motion and gravity with the theory of four elements: air, fire, water, and earth.
- He believed each element had its natural place due to differing densities.
- His laws of motion incorrectly stated that heavier objects fall faster, with speed proportional to weight and inversely proportional to the density of the medium.
- Aristotle stated violent motion's speed is limited by the force applied.
- The problem of motion led to the notion of a "prime mover."
- The Western Roman Empire's fall in the fifth century caused a decline in European intellectual pursuits.
- The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire continued to advance learning, including physics.
- In the sixth century, John Philoponus challenged Aristotelian science.
- Isidore of Miletus created an important compilation of Archimedes' works.
- Islamic scholarship inherited and developed Aristotelian physics, emphasizing observation and a priori reasoning, leading to early forms of the scientific method.
- Notable innovations under Islamic scholarship were in optics and vision by scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna.
- Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics presented an alternative to ancient Greek ideas about vision and discussed experiments with the camera obscura.
- Physics became separate when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover laws.
- Major developments include replacing the geocentric model with the heliocentric Copernican model.
- Kepler determined the laws governing planetary motion between 1609 and 1619.
- Galileo pioneered work on telescopes and observational astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries.
- Isaac Newton discovered and unified the laws of motion and universal gravitation.
- Newton and Leibniz developed calculus and applied it to physical problems.
- Laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from Industrial Revolution research as energy needs increased.
- By the end of the 19th century, thermodynamics, mechanics, and electromagnetics theories matched many observations and became the basis for classical physics.
- Inexplicable experimental results included the undetectable luminiferous aether, blackbody radiation, and electron emission of illuminated metals.
- Modern physics began in the early 20th century with Max Planck's quantum theory and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
- These theories addressed inaccuracies in classical mechanics.
- Classical mechanics predicted the speed of light depends on the observer, conflicting with Maxwell's equations.
- Einstein's special relativity corrected this discrepancy, replacing classical mechanics for fast-moving bodies and allowing for a constant speed of light.
- Black-body radiation was corrected by Planck's proposal that material oscillators' excitation is possible only in discrete steps proportional to their frequency.
- Quantum mechanics, pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac, improved on classical physics at small scales.
- The Standard Model of particle physics was derived from this early work.
- Following the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson at CERN in 2012, all fundamental particles predicted by the standard model appear to exist; research beyond the Standard Model continues.
- Areas of mathematics are important, such as the study of probabilities and groups.
- Physics uses experimentally tested theories as approximations of nature.
- These include classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and special relativity.
- The 20th-century discoveries of quantum mechanics and relativity revolutionized physics.
- These new concepts became the foundation of "modern physics," with other topics becoming "classical physics."
- The majority of physics applications are classical.
- Classical physics accurately describes systems whose length scales are greater than the atomic scale and whose motions are much slower than the speed of light.
- Classical physics includes traditional branches and topics recognized before the 20th century: classical mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism.
- Classical mechanics deals with bodies acted on by forces and bodies in motion, divided into statics, kinematics, and dynamics; it includes solid and fluid/continuum mechanics.
- Acoustics studies the production, control, transmission, and reception of sound.
- Important modern branches of acoustics include ultrasonics, bioacoustics, and electroacoustics.
- Optics studies light, including infrared and ultraviolet radiation, and phenomena like reflection, refraction, interference, diffraction, dispersion, and polarization.
- Heat is a form of energy; thermodynamics deals with relationships between heat and other energy forms.
- Electricity and magnetism have been studied as a single branch since the discovery of their connection in the early 19th century.
- Electrostatics deals with electric charges at rest, electrodynamics with moving charges, and magnetostatics with magnetic poles at rest.
- The discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics transformed physics' conceptual basis without reducing the practical value of earlier theories.
- Physics topics are divided into "classical physics" and "modern physics," with the latter including quantum mechanics and relativity.
- Classical physics concerns matter and energy on the normal scale, while modern physics concerns extreme conditions or very large/small scales.
- Atomic and nuclear physics study matter on the smallest scale at which chemical elements can be identified.
- Elementary particle physics studies the most basic units of matter and is also known as high-energy physics.
- On this scale, ordinary notions of space, time, matter, and energy are no longer valid.
- Modern physics' two chief theories present a different picture of space, time, and matter than classical physics.
- Classical mechanics approximates nature as continuous.
- Quantum theory is concerned with the discrete nature of phenomena at the atomic and subatomic level and with the complementary aspects of particles and waves.
- Relativity theory is concerned with phenomena in a moving frame of reference; special relativity excludes gravitational fields, while general relativity includes motion and gravitation.
- Physicists use the scientific method to test the validity of physical theories.
- Experiments and observations determine a theory's validity.
- Theorists develop mathematical models that agree with experiments and predict future results.
- Experimentalists devise and perform experiments to test theories and explore new phenomena.
- Theory and experiment affect and depend on each other.
- Progress occurs when experiments defy existing theories, prompting modeling, and when new theories generate testable predictions.
- Physicists at the interplay of theory and experiment are called phenomenologists.
- Theoretical physics takes inspiration from philosophy.
- Theoretical physics also deals with hypothetical issues like parallel universes, multiverses, and higher dimensions.
- Experimental physics expands and is expanded by engineering and technology.
- Experimental physicists involved in basic research design experiments with equipment like particle accelerators and lasers.
- Those in applied research often work in industry, developing technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and transistors.
- Physics covers a wide elementary particles to superclusters of galaxies.
- Physics aims to describe phenomena in terms of simpler ones, connecting observable things to root causes and unifying these causes.
- Ancient Chinese observed magnetism, and ancient Greeks knew of electricity.
- Physics understood electricity and magnetism as root causes.
- In the 19th century, it was revealed that these forces are two aspects of electromagnetism.
- Electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are now considered aspects of the electroweak interaction.
- Physics hopes to find an ultimate reason (theory of everything) for why nature exists as it does.
- Research progresses on various fronts.
- In condensed matter physics, high-temperature superconductivity is an unsolved theoretical problem.
- Many experiments aim to fabricate spintronics and quantum computers.
- In particle physics, experimental evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model includes neutrinos having non-zero mass.
- Physics of massive neutrinos remains an active research area.
- The Large Hadron Collider found the Higgs boson, and future research aims to prove or disprove supersymmetry.
- Research on dark matter and dark energy is ongoing.
- Everyday phenomena involving complexity, chaos, or turbulence are still poorly understood.
- Complex problems include the formation of sandpiles, nodes in trickling water, and the shape of water droplets.
- Complex phenomena have received growing attention since the 1970s due to modern mathematical methods and computers.
- Complex physics has become part of interdisciplinary research.
- Branches of physics include:
- Classical mechanics
- Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics
- Electromagnetism and photonics
- Relativity
- Quantum mechanics, atomic physics, and molecular physics
- Optics and acoustics
- Condensed matter physics
- High-energy particle physics and nuclear physics
- Cosmology
- Interdisciplinary fields.
- Individual fields have become increasingly specialized since the 20th century.
- "Universalists" like Einstein and Lev Landau, who worked in multiple fields, are now rare.
- Particle physics studies elementary constituents of matter and energy and their interactions.
- Particle physicists design and develop high-energy accelerators, detectors, and computer programs.
- Also called "high-energy physics" because many elementary particles are created during high-energy collisions.
- Interactions of elementary particles and fields are described by the Standard Model.
- Also accounts for the 12 known particles of matter (quarks and leptons) that interact via the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental forces.
- Dynamics are described in terms of matter particles exchanging gauge bosons (gluons, W and Z bosons, and photons, respectively).
- The Standard Model predicts a particle known as the Higgs boson.
- In July 2012, CERN announced the detection of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson.
- Nuclear physics studies the constituents and interactions of atomic nuclei.
- Commonly known applications are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology.
- Research has provided applications in nuclear medicine, magnetic resonance imaging, ion implantation in materials engineering, and radiocarbon dating.
- Atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) studies matter and light interactions on the scale of single atoms and molecules.
- These areas are grouped together due to interrelationships, similar methods, and common energy scales.
- Includes classical, semi-classical and quantum treatments.
- Can treat their subject from a microscopic view.
- Atomic physics studies the electron shells of atoms.
- Includes activities in quantum control, cooling and trapping of atoms and ions, low-temperature collision dynamics and the effects of electron correlation on structure and dynamics.
- Molecular physics focuses on multi-atomic structures and their internal and external interactions with matter and light.
- Optical physics focuses on the fundamental properties of optical fields and their interactions with matter in the microscopic realm.
- Condensed matter physics deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter.
- Concerns the "condensed" phases that appear whenever the number of particles in a system is extremely large and the interactions between them are strong.
- Familiar examples are solids and liquids.
- Exotic condensed phases include the superfluid and the Bose–Einstein condensate.
- Also superconducting phase and the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on atomic lattices.
- Condensed matter physics is the largest contemporary field.
- Solid-state physics is now considered one of its subfields.
- The term condensed matter physics was coined by Philip Anderson in 1967.
- Condensed matter physics has a large overlap with chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology and engineering.
- Astrophysics and astronomy apply physics theories and methods to study stellar structure, stellar evolution, the origin of the Solar System, and cosmology.
- Astrophysicists apply many physics disciplines, including mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear and particle physics, and atomic and molecular physics.
- Karl Jansky's 1931 discovery of radio signals from celestial bodies initiated radio astronomy.
- Space exploration has expanded the frontiers of astronomy.
- Space-based observations are necessary for infrared, ultraviolet, gamma-ray, and X-ray astronomy.
- Physical cosmology studies the formation and evolution of the universe on its largest scales.
- Albert Einstein's theory of relativity plays a central role in all modern cosmological theories.
- Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding prompted the steady state universe and the Big Bang theories.
- The Big Bang was confirmed by Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964.
- Also rests on Einstein's general relativity and the cosmological principle.
- Cosmologists have established the ΛCDM model of the universe, including cosmic inflation, dark energy, and dark matter.
- A physicist specializes in the field of physics, encompassing the interactions of matter and energy.
- Focuses on the root causes of phenomena and frames understanding in mathematical terms.
- Works across research fields, from sub-atomic and particle physics to cosmological length scales.
- Experimental physicists specialize in the observation of natural phenomena and the development and analysis of experiments.
- Theoretical physicists specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena.
- Physics relies on the philosophy of science and scientific method to advance knowledge.
- The scientific method employs a priori and a posteriori reasoning along with the use of Bayesian inference to measure the validity of a given theory.
- The philosophy of physics addresses the nature of space and time, determinism, and metaphysical outlooks.
- Many physicists have written about the philosophical implications of their work.
- Mathematics provides a compact and exact language used to describe the order in nature.
- Physics uses mathematics to organise and formulate experimental results.
- Mathematics yields precise or estimated solutions, from which predictions can be made and experimentally confirmed or negated.
- Physics has numerical data from experiments, along with their units of measure and estimates of measurement errors.
- Technologies based on mathematics have made computational physics an active area of research.
- Ontology is a prerequisite for physics but not for mathematics.
- Physics is concerned with descriptions of the real world, while mathematics is concerned with abstract patterns.
- Physics statements are synthetic, while mathematical statements are analytic.
- Physics experiments yield numerical data with units of measure and error estimates.
- Applied physics is physics research and development intended for a particular use.
- It differs from engineering in that applied physicists may not be designing something in particular.
- Applied physicists use physics in scientific research.
- Statics, a subfield of mechanics, is used in the building of bridges and other static structures.
- Understanding and use of acoustics results in sound control and better concert halls.
- Similarly, optics creates better optical devices.
- Simulations in engineering speed up the development of a new technology.
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