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Did you get your physics education in high school or university? I only had to take one physics class in the USA at college for my major, quantum electrodynamic

Did you get your physics education in high school or university? I only had to take one physics class in the USA at college for my major, quantum electrodynamics for electrical engineering but my professor wrote the textbook and I recall he went over each experiment starting from the fundamentals of our understanding of the basics of the atom, Newton's understanding of light at the time, double slit experiment, to Maxwell's equations, the Michelson Morley ether experiment, to deriving then proving experimentally proving general relativity and decomposing GR into Newtonian physics/other laws of electromagnetism, I am still in awe at the people just figuring this stuff out from first principles. Anyways, I haven't read this (have it on hold at my library) but someone recommended this book on reddit How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780385545655 https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780385545655

layer8 2y ago
> experimentally proving general relativity Can you elaborate on that? What experiments did the professor perform?
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  I mis wrote, he talked about the experiments done to verify general and special relativity. Michelson-Morley was one of them that sticks in my mind along with some traveling atomic clocks. We never recreated the experiments like some of the other commenters did in their classes.
augustusseizure 2y ago
What’s the name of that textbook? It sounds really interesting. Isaac Asimov wrote a couple books that follow the narrative of science from the beginnings up until the 80s or so, which I highly recommend. One is called Atom and is more focused on how we got to our “present” understanding of particles. There’s also one that takes a broader view, it’s something like History of Science (? not at my bookshelf right now). There’s several books in this genre for math as well. IMO it’s a much better structure for pedagogy since we can piggy back the education on our natural wiring to care about narrative and mystery/puzzles.
- ghastmaster 2y ago
  You're referring to The History of Physics. An excellent read for a budding mind. Asimov was incredibly talented.
  - owyn 2y ago
    I was looking at my parent's bookshelf and saw a book on Shakespeare and I recognized the author's name: Asimov! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Guide_to_Shakespeare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Guide_to_Shakespeare It's like 800 pages, I haven't read it but I think I'll keep that one. Seems like it might be hard to find another physical copy. He was definitely prolific on a number of topics.
    - lIl-IIIl 2y ago
      Not surprising! "Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology" - from his Wikipedia page.
      - dotancohen 2y ago
        He was also incredibly talented in phrasing ideas so that they stick in the reader's mind. I am right now sitting next to a dog Asimov named after him.
  - hammock 2y ago
    Understanding Physics? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41819.Understanding_Physics https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41819.Understanding_Phys...
- lIl-IIIl 2y ago
  His book "Understanding Physics" is amazing. Similar in spirit to Petzold's "Code" that is often praised on HN.
- albrewer 2y ago
ddfs123 2y ago
That was my Physics too, but Chemistry just completely glanced over the history. Same thing with Mathematics, no backstory of mathematicians. I guess that either 1. Physics History is short enough, well-recorded, or 2. Physicists really like teaching their history.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Yeah, in retrospect I think this aligns with my experience. But I'd even say that with the famous physics experiments I still remember often thinking "How did they get such precision with such primitive instruments?" I mean they would explain the experiments in very basic/schematic terms, but would have been nice to actually replicate I've to truly understand how it worked.
- SJC_Hacker 2y ago
  Physicists seem to be always seeking a deeper understanding of everything, more so than other fields like biology and sometimes chemistry, who have a tendency to get bogged down into to the idiosyncrasies of particular phenomena.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  MIT has an excellent chem course on YouTube that goes into the history
DonaldFisk 2y ago
> to deriving then proving experimentally proving general relativity and decomposing GR into Newtonian physics/other laws of electromagnetism Do you mean Special Relativity, which covers classical mechanics and electromagnetism? General Relativity covers gravitation and cosmology without electromagnetism (though Kaluza and later Klein devised a theory unifying gravity and electromagnetism by adding an fifth dimension to General Relativity, which can then be decomposed into 4-dimensional GR and Maxwell's equations).
knodi123 2y ago
you only had to take one physics class, and it was quantum electrodynamics??? That sounds to me as if someone said "The only math class I've taken was differential equations."
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  I think I placed out of the physics prerequisites (everyone was expected to have some physics in high school and we went over that and more in a mechanical engineering statics/dynamics/fluids class we all took at the same time) and QED was a standard first semester sophomore year class in the electrical engineering curriculum, the professor made it a lot of fun though every class I remember him deriving equations for thirty minutes on the overhead projector as he explained things, and it was the largest class I had with fellow electrical engineering majors, there was an advanced calculus/diff eq class and linear algebra class during our freshman year.

layer8 2y ago

> experimentally proving general relativity Can you elaborate on that? What experiments did the professor perform?

stevenwoo 2y ago
I mis wrote, he talked about the experiments done to verify general and special relativity. Michelson-Morley was one of them that sticks in my mind along with some traveling atomic clocks. We never recreated the experiments like some of the other commenters did in their classes.

augustusseizure 2y ago

What’s the name of that textbook? It sounds really interesting. Isaac Asimov wrote a couple books that follow the narrative of science from the beginnings up until the 80s or so, which I highly recommend. One is called Atom and is more focused on how we got to our “present” understanding of particles. There’s also one that takes a broader view, it’s something like History of Science (? not at my bookshelf right now). There’s several books in this genre for math as well. IMO it’s a much better structure for pedagogy since we can piggy back the education on our natural wiring to care about narrative and mystery/puzzles.

ghastmaster 2y ago
You're referring to The History of Physics. An excellent read for a budding mind. Asimov was incredibly talented.
- owyn 2y ago
  I was looking at my parent's bookshelf and saw a book on Shakespeare and I recognized the author's name: Asimov! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Guide_to_Shakespeare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Guide_to_Shakespeare It's like 800 pages, I haven't read it but I think I'll keep that one. Seems like it might be hard to find another physical copy. He was definitely prolific on a number of topics.
  - lIl-IIIl 2y ago
    Not surprising! "Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology" - from his Wikipedia page.
    - dotancohen 2y ago
      He was also incredibly talented in phrasing ideas so that they stick in the reader's mind. I am right now sitting next to a dog Asimov named after him.
- hammock 2y ago
  Understanding Physics? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41819.Understanding_Physics https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41819.Understanding_Phys...
lIl-IIIl 2y ago
His book "Understanding Physics" is amazing. Similar in spirit to Petzold's "Code" that is often praised on HN.
albrewer 2y ago

ddfs123 2y ago

That was my Physics too, but Chemistry just completely glanced over the history. Same thing with Mathematics, no backstory of mathematicians. I guess that either 1. Physics History is short enough, well-recorded, or 2. Physicists really like teaching their history.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Yeah, in retrospect I think this aligns with my experience. But I'd even say that with the famous physics experiments I still remember often thinking "How did they get such precision with such primitive instruments?" I mean they would explain the experiments in very basic/schematic terms, but would have been nice to actually replicate I've to truly understand how it worked.
SJC_Hacker 2y ago
Physicists seem to be always seeking a deeper understanding of everything, more so than other fields like biology and sometimes chemistry, who have a tendency to get bogged down into to the idiosyncrasies of particular phenomena.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
MIT has an excellent chem course on YouTube that goes into the history

DonaldFisk 2y ago

> to deriving then proving experimentally proving general relativity and decomposing GR into Newtonian physics/other laws of electromagnetism Do you mean Special Relativity, which covers classical mechanics and electromagnetism? General Relativity covers gravitation and cosmology without electromagnetism (though Kaluza and later Klein devised a theory unifying gravity and electromagnetism by adding an fifth dimension to General Relativity, which can then be decomposed into 4-dimensional GR and Maxwell's equations).

knodi123 2y ago

you only had to take one physics class, and it was quantum electrodynamics??? That sounds to me as if someone said "The only math class I've taken was differential equations."

stevenwoo 2y ago
I think I placed out of the physics prerequisites (everyone was expected to have some physics in high school and we went over that and more in a mechanical engineering statics/dynamics/fluids class we all took at the same time) and QED was a standard first semester sophomore year class in the electrical engineering curriculum, the professor made it a lot of fun though every class I remember him deriving equations for thirty minutes on the overhead projector as he explained things, and it was the largest class I had with fellow electrical engineering majors, there was an advanced calculus/diff eq class and linear algebra class during our freshman year.