Hi everyone. I love physics since i am young.

I am currently a post grad student in physics focusing on theoretical condensed matter physics.

Recently, i went to different Matrikulasi to give talk on theoretical physics.

I show them some basic simulation of Classical Mechanics and the students seems to be very interested in all the simulations.

It is sad that career in physics is never a priority in Malaysia nor it is exposed to the students in any way. Worse still, not much people know about the difference between Theoretical physics and Experimental physics.

Anyway, since this sub forum is still new, I will start the first topic on physics itself.

Certainly, for those who knows physics well, astronomy, material engineering/science, earth sciences, nanotech and others are also physics study as well. There is no clear boundry between all these disciplines and i hope everyone will hop in and discuss anything related to physics.

Doesn't matter you are currently a form 3 student or a Post Doc. Join in!

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Added on June 14, 2009, 11:41 amFor those who are interested with the simulation
go to

MyPhysicsLab


Or just download the whole simulation. (Requires Java)
Simulation

This post has been edited by wKkaY: Jun 20 2009, 04:08 PM

bro i download the myphysicslab y cant i open it after extract it

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Added on June 14, 2009, 12:38 pmi always refer this website to figure how certain stuff works... its very useful for me...

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

This post has been edited by ganabathi: Jun 14 2009, 12:38 PM

hmm. you don't extract it with winrar. You open it with Java.

Just download new Java and install it. You should be able to double click on it then.

Hi i am an engineer. i did do college physics, but a lot of my physic knowledge has ebbed away with time not because of want but because of just not touching it.
anyway Modular, whats the difference between modular and teoretical physics.
If i am not wrong cosmology falls under the latter?

you mean experimental physics and theoretical physics?

Cosmology is a special branch because the scientist in this field is usually addressed as cosmologist instead of physics.

However, to answer your question. Cosmology have both experimental and theoretical part. The theoretical cosmology icon would be stephen hawking.

Experimental work in cosmology is usually data harvesting from satellite, telescope and also work in some specific collider. (this means some part of cosmology is also particle physics as well.)

Theoretical physics and experimental physics exists is all different branches and fields of physics EXCEPT for string theory where only theoretical work exist.

Interesting.

Mind to elaborate more on string theory? I just know it's a theory to unite classical physics(like Newton's Law) with quantum physics.

Quantum physics is a weird field,though.Any good links to learn about them? Kinda interested in it,even it's completely irrelevant to want i study now.

Doing civil engineering,by the way.

Hey, does anyone heard of M-theory or Theory of Everything? The more I discover String theory, the more confused I am.

Quantum physics is so hard to understand.. It doesn't make any sense at all.

This post has been edited by BlueWind: Jun 14 2009, 06:07 PM

Ah, what part of theoretical Condensed Matter are you specialising in?

Cheesenium/BlueWind: M-theory is simply a unified version of 5 (iirc) different string theories [yes there are plenty of variants of string theories]. String theory is currently an approach to unify general relativity (not Newton's Laws) with quantum physics, but well, there are some philosophical issues surrounding it right now, let's say

edit: note the plural, theories. yes string theories. plenty of them around.

There are also other candidate theories, but to be honest everyone's (I am massively exaggerating - but yes the community seems, from my quite distant perspective) now simply waiting for the results from the LHC (CERN) [the big bang machine, machine that will end the world, blah blah blah] to start culling down on the theories available to give some new direction of study I guess. Because frankly, any crazy/non-crazy idea is possible. They just await the test of experimentation [the truth test in science], which the LHC will do [but the LHC won't be able to do much though, it's energy reach is too low to see effects of supersymmetry and stuff which is afaik, a feature of most string theories, believe it or not, for all the talk in the media about how powerful it is and stuff - but they hope to be able to see hints of supersymmetry at the upper end of the energy reach of the LHC. don't expect much till 2012 and beyond though, the LHC will slowly ramp up from this september onwards to the 7 TeV beam hopefully sometime early - middle of next year]

This post has been edited by bgeh: Jun 14 2009, 08:17 PM

you can obtain string theory information online easily. Get to know the basic idea of it first. The string theory is perhas the most controversial theory ever exist.

As a basic rule of science, all of us knows that if you have a theory, you need an experiment to prove or falsify it. But in this string theory, you can say anything, suggest any theory and even claim that you found the realy unification theory. But! no one can prove you theory!

to bgeh, i am doing some specific material research, thin film and multilayer properties.

You?

Don't know what I'm doing yet to be honest. Gravitating towards mathematics/quantum field theory.

But frankly, haven't a clue.

This post has been edited by bgeh: Jun 14 2009, 07:44 PM

you are doing you phd oversea now?

Haha, it is normal to be confused a little bit at first.

Seems you are doing fully theoretical work as well.

Anyway, i don't know much about qft. Only studied basic things in qm like schrodinger equation. You gonna needs mathematics a lot! haha.

I am also doing some basic grid computing besides my physics work.

Heck, if M-theory is successfully proven, I would open my eyes really BIG to see all the teachings change. I really cannot imagine how the world is going to be like if we were to abandon String Theory.

huh? If we do abandon string theory. Life goes on. There are other approach towards unification theory.

The major problem with string theory is that it cannot be proven or falsified as well. What to do?


I am not really into these great n-th dimensions and different stringy theories.

Gravity lor.. How to unify it? Anyway, sorry about the confusion there because I got messed up with M-theory which is the advance name of String Theory and Theory of Everything.

Trust me, if only we all knew the answer. String theory has plenty of brilliant minds working on it (and I mean damn damn brilliant)

Plenty of brilliant people finding that the last 30 - 40 years of research into string theory came to nought, plenty of depressed theoretical physics departments specialising in string theory I'd imagine

But if that ever occurs, well at least it did bring in a lot of beautiful mathematics

@bgeh and modular,
do you think the advent of the computer age has led to a degradation in scientific revolution in comparison to the earlier 20th century where a lot of breakthrough in physic was discovered by many great minds?
or do you think the computer actually is a handy tool to ease work in data colleection and complicated calculations?

Computers are essential nowadays. It doesn't matters whether which field you are working in.

certainly, the ability to crunch enormous amount of data of super computers is proved to be very useful. Perhaps some new idea or insight can be found through the implementation of computer in physics research.

Despite its usefulness, it is not the most important part of physics. The idea to be able to propose new model, solution are much more important.

Like for myself, i am doing some research on grid computing but my supervisor doesn't really like the idea because he thinks that i shouldn't deviate from my real physics research.

i think generalizing PHYSICS discussion is a bit difficult, no? since Physics alone covers a huge area already.

perhaps i will limit the discussion here towards higher level physics instead of kopitiam styled questions. (time travel, e=mc2 those)

more on technical things instead of discussion.

Are you suggesting we split into different fields? HEP, condensed matter, optic, nuclear etc??

i think different level of understanding is more important. It is unlikely that there are enough people to discuss in each research field.

what is your area of expertise modular? care to share? maybe we can take off from there and dispense more specific questions with relation to your research.
hey maybe you can even link us to some reseach papers you have contributed to?