Why Are We in Physics?

                       ______________________

 

                        Timothy Paul Smith

                    University of New Hampshire

                        tim.smith@unh.edu

 

	If there is an overwhelming movement in our field today, it is young 

physicist heading towards the door.  In droves, new Ph.Ds and graduate 

students are leaving the discipline.  Those of us who remain behind some times 

find ourselves pondering upon, and questioning our career choices;  federal 

research dollars are drying up and academic openings are few and highly 

competitive.  If you have just finished a Bachelors and tasted the mysterious 

fruits of quantum mechanic or other abstraction of physics undoubtedly the 

temptation is there, but is it a particular vocation?  If your a graduate 

student, post-doc, research scientist or junior faculty,  can you really move 

up into something more permanent?  The future of the field is gray and it is 

only natural to ask "why did I every choose Physics?"  I do not want to dwell 

on the despair of occupation (I have been bored to tears over the question of 

employment, I go to conferences to talk physics,  but find people, especially 

young investigators wringing there hands and talk personal finance), rather I 

would like to just dwell on the question in the title, "Why are we in 

Physics?"

 

How did we get into this field?

_______________________________

 

	It has been suggested that most of us got into this field due to 

either an interest in astronomy or by fiddling with old radios and other 

electronics.  I recently participated in a discussion group with  

undergraduates and working researchers.  When asked `why physics?', most 

undergraduates expressed a desire to comprehend the world,  to gain access to 

the vantage of the physicist.  The established researchers at first explained 

their motivations in terms of more then average technical competence.  But 

when exposed to the enthusiasm of the novice they too, even the most hardened, 

confessed a strain of innate curiosity.

 

	For a great many of us it was also a path of less resistance (I 

refrain from referring to this as a "least action principle" since it is 

hard to think of the rigors of research as least action). In high school, and 

later in college, you were better at physics then most other students.  It 

makes us feel good to do well at  something most people find difficult.  Some 

of us found it to be our best subject, others of us found it our most 

challenging. So given the choice between finding a job in the uncertain world 

`out there' or sticking with the better known world of academic,  we entered 

graduate school.  If that is the only reason that you are presently a 

physicist then with the economics being so disheartening, the advantage of 

this career choice is questionable.

 

	I am being too cynical.  In truth I expect all of us are in physics 

for a combinations of these three reasons;  we are starry eyed children full 

of wonder,  we are better then the average at it,  and we found the transition 

from school to research to be smooth.  But we really must have found the field 

interesting in order to overcome the obstacles (be it differential equations 

or the financing of tuitions) which we have all had to overcome.

 

Why do we stay in this field?

_____________________________

 

	Physics really is intriguing and there is nothing else quite like it.  

It ask questions about the world no one else can ask.  We ask "what is the 

nature of nature?" We have a license to pounder the universe.   Jacob 

Bronowski, in is `ascent of Man' reintroduced us to William Blake's words:

 

	To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

	And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

	Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

	And Eternity in an hour [1]

 

 

The grasping of nature is an adventure of the first magnitude.  Who can 

comprehend the vastness of the universe,  or the energy of the nucleus? The 

complexity of fluid-dynamics or the simplicity (in some sense) of the  

elements? In what sense do we sit half way between the electron and the 

universe? A poet may paint an enchanting picture but:

 



	It seems to me that Keats was wrong when he asked, 

	rhetorically, "Do not all charms fly ... at the mere 

	touch of cold philosophy?"  The word "philosophy" 

	standing, in his day, for what we now call "physical 

	science". But Keats was wrong, I say, because there 

	is more charm in one "mere" fact, confirmed by test 

	and observation, linked to other facts through coherent 

	theory into a rational system, than in a whole brainful of 

	fancy and fantasy.  I see more poetry in a chunk of 

	quartzite that in a make-believe wood nymph, more beauty 

	in the revelation of a verifiable intellectual construction 

	that in whole misty empires of obsolete mythology. [2]

 

 

So what is this unique perspective of the universe which we as physicist are 

endowed with?

 

 

The Unique View of the Physicist

________________________________

 

	A common misconception of scientist is that of cataloger of

"mere facts".  We measure the mass of protons, the age of the universe, the 

distance to unreachable stars and galaxies.  We measure the ion flux in the 

magnetosphere and the quark distribution in neutrons.  We have produced 

volumes of data.  But is that all there is to physics?

 

	We all tell our funding agent and agency that a healthy basic

and applied research program is essential to future technology,  and

therefor the health of and future of the economy.  Even Francis Bacon

writes:

 

	Now the true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other

	than this:  that human life be endowed with new discoveries

	and powers [3]



That many by the legitimate reason why society  supports our research,  

but I don't think that is why we are in the field.

 

	I think we look at the world and see symmetries and aesthetic  which 

we can only perceive with the tools of our training.

 

	When I look at a rainbow full of color, majestically spanning the sky 

I as am thrilled as a child.  But it is like a present in ribbons, bows and 

fancy wrapping paper.  Let me see the inside.  A step closer and I note that 

the rainbow is not just any color (there are no browns and pinks) but violet 

to red  (4000-6500 A). and what is it? I know I will never find the pot of 

gold at the end, I can not even hope to find the end. No matter where I move, 

it too moves.  Other post down-pore pedestrians have also seen it, but in 

different places. And what about the phantom and evasive second (and third) 

rainbow?

 

	Really, it is the scientist in us who notes the arrangement of color 

and how the apparent location depends upon the location of the observer.  And 

we understand why.  It is a vision build of the fleeting conditions of passing 

rain and  brilliant sunshine on the macroscopic scale.  It is build on the 

full spectrum of white light from the sun, the wavelength dependent 

diffraction of light as it passes through the curved surface of rain drops 

(why are rain-drops drawn out spheres, `drop-like' in shape - we know the 

answer to that one too), and internal reflection. These depend on index 

matching and so forth.  It really is simple.  It is beautiful to see. But it 

is amazing and awe inspiring when understood in terms of the unique conditions 

which allow very common place laws of nature to paint an arch across the sky.  

It really is more astonishing then if the Greek gods had erected a titian arch 

d' triumph.

 

	What about ice floating, when everything else tells us cold things 

shrink? It it simply a matter of chemical bounds (quantum effects) and 

geometry. What about those ghostly dancers of the northern night the  

aurora borealis and why an australis in the south?  Magnetic fields, 

solar winds and charged particles. And of course everything, absolutely 

everything, from atoms and astronomy to zebras and zucchini is a 

relativistic and quantum `effect', build of a handful of elementary particles, 

controlled by continuity and least action.  That is all.

 

	Perhaps some will charge us with the desecration of nature's artistic 

handy work with our deconstructionist approach to nature.  However I think 

that we could argue that nature is just showing us the most advance 

pointillistic examples, where complexity arises from tiny brush strokes; the 

most simplistic elements, as a necessary and natural consequence.

 

	One of the things which gives a physicist a thrill is to comprehend 

and understand complexity in terms of its elements;  the pieces and that which 

impels them to motion,  interaction, organization or transformation.  We can 

look at a system, such as turbulence,  and declare it too complex for 

forecasting,  and in the same breath pronounce it to be but a manifestation of 

Newton's simple laws of motion.  An apparent conflict between complex and 

simplicity.  Only a physicist can look at this "contradiction", and see no 

contradiction.

 

	It is this view of the world which is unique to us, and I believe it 

is why we stay in physics.



                    ----------------------------



[1] William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.

 

[2] Edward Abbey, The Journey Home, p 86.

 

[3] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum LXXXI.