What has physics done to me lately? Does it help me in my life? and the answer is Yes. The study of nature is considered to be the only way to understand our universe. Back in B.C's most philosophers believed in Flat earth model, instead of the current model, which is the Oblate spheroid ( rotational symmetric ellipsoid ).
Once a well known scientist (Bertrand Russell) gave a lecture on astronomy, he explained all the orbitals and the movements of the moon around the earth and the earth revolving around the sun. At the end of the lecture an old lady stood up and said "What you have told is rubbish, the world is a really flat surface and is supported on the back of a giant tortoise". The Scientist gave a smile and questioned " What is the tortoise standing on?". "You are very clever young man".
This short part is an extract from the book-A brief history of time.( I wrote a review on this book).
The thing behind this is that the old lady just believed in things which made sense, but she didn't give a try on understanding what she was actually believing.How was the earth just staying there in its orbit without falling? The reason behind this is the Gravitational force. The law of gravitation states that every object in the Universe attracts every other object which is directly proportional to their product of masses and inversely proportional to the square distance between them. This law was stated by Newton, a legend who discovered gravity and well known for the the paper he published. His paper 'The Mathematica Principia' is considered as one of the greatest papers of all time. It was hard for him to calculate the gravitational force between objects and many other problems in other topics using elementary mathematics. So he developed a new level of math 'Calculus' which helped him solve the equations. Calculus was both developed by Newton and Leibniz . His works have been published in many different book and his major contributions had lead to Classical Mechanics.
In Physics, it is really hard to relate tiny atom in an apple with a huge planet in our galaxy. So physicists figured out a way to extend this study which is known as the Quantum Mechanics. Classical mechanics is the study of macroscopic level and Quantum Mechanics is the study of microscopic level. If we get a chance to link Quantum Mechanics with Relativity theory then we might have finally completed the quest on finding the theory of everything. But the problem is that if the theory is too complicated, then we might want to sort it down and split the topics again to make others understand the way it is.
I recently read this book - Six easy pieces by Richard Feynman and he has explained the importance of the atom hypothesis in the introduction part really well.
For Example (Feynman) -
If suppose the current generation snapped and we all have 5 minutes left for the death, but there are possibilities of life in the land and you have given a place to store something for them. If this is the case and if you choose knowledge over everything. Then which is the most preferable knowledge you would like to share it with the next starting generation?
The answer would be the atom hypothesis.
The atom hypothesis - Everything in the universe is made of atoms.This is the basic fundamentals of science. The clue given to them would be- Everything is made of atoms, which is in perpetual jiggling motion and its characteristics might change if you experiment with them. This particular clue should be depicted as a drawing so that it is well understandable to them. This might take a few years for them to understand it, but their science will be developing more rapidly than ours.
A better definition of Science
Science is said to be the study of nature.
To understand this, consider a chess board which is our universe here, and the moves are made by the God. The moves he makes in order to save his king, we have to figure them all out. Each move is consider to be a change in the universe. For instance, moving a bishop diagonally results in change in climate (rain). So here we assume our universe as a chess game played between Gods, and the moves made by him in the game are the changes in climate. So we deduce all the rules from the chess board in order to predict the future weather. But if something strange happens that the moves have changed their rules in the chess game and you try so hard to figure it out by relating it all the rules deduced but you just cant get them related to the new move. In this case, we come up with a new rule which is said to be Castling in the game. Here's a twist and now it is said that all the rules cannot be correct, when time changes the rules or laws keep changing.
Theory of everything
In 1995, when Albert Einstein passed away. Each and every newspaper published the picture of his desk.
And they quoted it as "The unfinished manuscript of the greatest work of the greatest scientist of our time". The unfinished manuscript in this context mentions the Theory of everything. The dream and the goal of every cosmologists is this theory of everything.What exactly does this theory of everything mean?
It's an equation which summarizes all the physical forces in the universe and this equation should be as simple as possible. This theory is said to be the ultimate theory, we might even get to predict the future. To understand this topic deep, we must know the concept of M-theory (Membrane theory) which is quite complicated. So I'll drop the concept here. If you have interest you might wanna take a look over it, its quite interesting but I cant understand it. To learn this we should be familiar with classical mechanics, quantum mechanics and Cosmology. But you still can try getting a vague idea of what string theory is.
Conclusion
Aren't you curious to know how our universe works? What is the need of science in our life? Why cant we travel to the past or the future? Science is the only answer to all these questions. In fact we live in a world in which everything around us is related to science. (The tables, laptop, people etc.) We all are made up of infinite number of atoms which is relatively negligible when compared to the infinite number of starts in our galaxy. And physics is one of the sub candidate of science which might help us get to know the real concept of the Universe (The Ultimate theory of Everything).
Once a well known scientist (Bertrand Russell) gave a lecture on astronomy, he explained all the orbitals and the movements of the moon around the earth and the earth revolving around the sun. At the end of the lecture an old lady stood up and said "What you have told is rubbish, the world is a really flat surface and is supported on the back of a giant tortoise". The Scientist gave a smile and questioned " What is the tortoise standing on?". "You are very clever young man".
This short part is an extract from the book-A brief history of time.( I wrote a review on this book).
The thing behind this is that the old lady just believed in things which made sense, but she didn't give a try on understanding what she was actually believing.How was the earth just staying there in its orbit without falling? The reason behind this is the Gravitational force. The law of gravitation states that every object in the Universe attracts every other object which is directly proportional to their product of masses and inversely proportional to the square distance between them. This law was stated by Newton, a legend who discovered gravity and well known for the the paper he published. His paper 'The Mathematica Principia' is considered as one of the greatest papers of all time. It was hard for him to calculate the gravitational force between objects and many other problems in other topics using elementary mathematics. So he developed a new level of math 'Calculus' which helped him solve the equations. Calculus was both developed by Newton and Leibniz . His works have been published in many different book and his major contributions had lead to Classical Mechanics.
In Physics, it is really hard to relate tiny atom in an apple with a huge planet in our galaxy. So physicists figured out a way to extend this study which is known as the Quantum Mechanics. Classical mechanics is the study of macroscopic level and Quantum Mechanics is the study of microscopic level. If we get a chance to link Quantum Mechanics with Relativity theory then we might have finally completed the quest on finding the theory of everything. But the problem is that if the theory is too complicated, then we might want to sort it down and split the topics again to make others understand the way it is.
I recently read this book - Six easy pieces by Richard Feynman and he has explained the importance of the atom hypothesis in the introduction part really well.
For Example (Feynman) -
If suppose the current generation snapped and we all have 5 minutes left for the death, but there are possibilities of life in the land and you have given a place to store something for them. If this is the case and if you choose knowledge over everything. Then which is the most preferable knowledge you would like to share it with the next starting generation?
The answer would be the atom hypothesis.
The atom hypothesis - Everything in the universe is made of atoms.This is the basic fundamentals of science. The clue given to them would be- Everything is made of atoms, which is in perpetual jiggling motion and its characteristics might change if you experiment with them. This particular clue should be depicted as a drawing so that it is well understandable to them. This might take a few years for them to understand it, but their science will be developing more rapidly than ours.
A better definition of Science
Science is said to be the study of nature.
To understand this, consider a chess board which is our universe here, and the moves are made by the God. The moves he makes in order to save his king, we have to figure them all out. Each move is consider to be a change in the universe. For instance, moving a bishop diagonally results in change in climate (rain). So here we assume our universe as a chess game played between Gods, and the moves made by him in the game are the changes in climate. So we deduce all the rules from the chess board in order to predict the future weather. But if something strange happens that the moves have changed their rules in the chess game and you try so hard to figure it out by relating it all the rules deduced but you just cant get them related to the new move. In this case, we come up with a new rule which is said to be Castling in the game. Here's a twist and now it is said that all the rules cannot be correct, when time changes the rules or laws keep changing.
Theory of everything
In 1995, when Albert Einstein passed away. Each and every newspaper published the picture of his desk.
And they quoted it as "The unfinished manuscript of the greatest work of the greatest scientist of our time". The unfinished manuscript in this context mentions the Theory of everything. The dream and the goal of every cosmologists is this theory of everything.What exactly does this theory of everything mean?
Conclusion
Aren't you curious to know how our universe works? What is the need of science in our life? Why cant we travel to the past or the future? Science is the only answer to all these questions. In fact we live in a world in which everything around us is related to science. (The tables, laptop, people etc.) We all are made up of infinite number of atoms which is relatively negligible when compared to the infinite number of starts in our galaxy. And physics is one of the sub candidate of science which might help us get to know the real concept of the Universe (The Ultimate theory of Everything).
A really good insight for high school children who want to know about the universe. Although your summary on the universe could have been longer and more detailed its a well written article (not counting the grammar and language errors).
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