Often I am told that students studying Physics has declined in recent years. Will this lead to a shortage of Physicists in the future? What will this mean to society? What will this mean to the next generation of Physicists themselves?
Does no one have any opinions? It amazes me how on a science site that political threads get hit 20 times a minute but pertinent science questions get no hits.
The students that are taking physics classes are more likely to be interested and capable of doing the related studies, so in this situation, quality > quantity. However, to have a population uneducated in such an important subject is never a good thing, so quality < quantity. I have heard that physics is a victim of it's own success, where some physicists are generally not interested in the low wages of the educational workforce, and some students are not interested in the demanding requirements of an education in physics. So I don't know... perhaps quality = quantity? There must be a strong correlation in this situation.
So you think that the educators themselves may be partially responsible for not drumming up trade, so to speak?
You know which way it's going - a plethora of drama students and tourism/ media studies degrees - because science and maths is "too hard". Basically we're f*cked.
Indeed. Physics was not a required subject for me to graduate from high school. I didn't take the class. The class was not offered to people until they had reached 11th grade (in the American K-12 system), and the fact that our schools already suffer from their lack of support for maths and hard sciences in general has caused many students to educate themselves in other ways, such as business management, accounting, or an art class.
I think it's more about physics being a boring field for most, and not rewarding enough financially to make up the difference(at least, that's how people view it). :shrug: Computer, Bio, and Chem sciences are much more interesting. Who doesn't want to create a great machine, wonder drug, or new compound.
I know there's plenty of money in computers though. But there is just no challenge and reward as great as Physics to me, being rich doesn't interest me.
Be patient, we're trying to change that. I think I speak for a consensus of the moderators when I say we want to turn this back into a club for scientists, future scientists and people interested in science. Of course those people will want to talk about politics and dating and music like everybody else, but that should not be our focus. Oh there's far more to it than that. Do you know any teachers? Whether in K-12 or a university, their lives are just miserable, between academic politics and children who were raised to nurture only videogame skills.[ Over on this side, where we still quaintly write out "mathematics," the issue is not that it's too hard but that it's simply unfashionable. The great intellectual revolution of the 1960s is over and the famous American Pendulum has swung back the other way in its oscillation between extremes, as it does in sex, drugs and everything else. It's been at least 25 years since it became trendy to know absolutely no science. Not coincidentally there's been a matching trendiness in the anti-science of fundamentalist religion. That's incredible and a sad illustration of the American Pendulum. When I was in high school fifty years ago physics and chemistry were required courses in the 11th grade and available as electives in the 10th. Biology was required in 10th, algebra in 8th, Spanish in 7th. String theory? Relativity? Electrons communicating across vast distances instantaneously? What could be more exciting! Chemical engineering is very lucrative. But it's also really demanding. You have to take all the hardest chemistry courses AND all the hardest engineering courses. Not for the faint of heart. I suspect the same will be true of bioengineering very soon. The challenge is in my specialty, the management of the projects and the "information infrastructure." "Software engineering" is a lie. It's really a black art with just a touch of a medieval guild craft. No measurement, no quality assurance, no capturing of best practices, no repeatable processes, no continuous improvement. Yes we talk about those things but they're primtive. The Egyptians who built the pyramids and the Romans who built the aqueducts were better engineers than Bill Gates. The challenge is to build an "information infrastructure" worthy of the name. Today's software is built BY people who love to spend half their lives debugging software FOR people who love to spend half their lives debugging software. Not for the other 5.95 billion human beings. You don't have to want to be rich to care about your future. It costs a lot of money to buy a house that is not a 150-minute round-trip from your job, to put two kids through college, to see some of the world's interesting spots, and to manage the retirement portfolio that will be your generation's own responsibility when pyramid of the Social Security Ponzi Scheme collapses on itself.
So your advice would be to give up what interests one, in favour of endlessly punching buttons so one can live in a better house?
I think he meant that it is interesting for him and a lot of other people... nothing to do with giving up what you find interesting. 'course, he did say that the better infonet wasn't meant for those who don't help build it...:shrug: They don't really make physics interesting in school, do they? Do calculations, then the teachers see you got the idea. And it's complicated, you have to take in consideration boring (all already set, no improvising) systems. If you HAVE to "study" for that enough to pass a test, on the same day you have other tests... of course physics becomes appalling. That kinda sounds like physics' teachers could use some advertising/(mass) communication skills. edit - I voted for "Physicist themselves will be better off". And this "science-dark era" is an option too, the two needn't exclude one another.
Seriously study Physicssssssssssssssss!!!! Seriously!:xctd: Yeah I was going to make it multiple choice but I thought some Richards might vote for contradicting options so......
103 years ago, physics was easy. Since then the universe has become gradually more incomprehensible. Studying physics, and quantum physics in particular, no longer offers the reward of understanding. It merely offers a great number of ways of being intelligently confused. The realisation that the universe is actually beyond human understanding is rather bad for physics and physicists. Even though there are good ways of putting a physics degree to practical use.
As physic tends to have strong impact on society at least a generation after some understanding of nature has been advanced, the decrease in percentage of students choosing this course of study in the last two decades is just now begining to have impact in the US economy. I became concerned about the economic impact of this trend nearly 10 years ago. I gave the matter some thought to see if there was anything I might be able to do to make physics (and the "hard sciences" including mathematics) more attractive. (As a part time professor, with 50 years of direct connection to Cornell and Johns Hopkins, this was a natural interest of mine.) The "straw" which moved me to action was and article in an alumni magazine telling of the "successful results" of a stock trading plan experiment concluded a few years earlier. (Students were given real money to develop their trading skills and could keep the profits.) The article proudly announced that X% of the science majors has switched to business (or corporate law) and almost all participants went into the financial field when they graduated. (I forget the value of X but it was a double digit %.) That is when I wrote my book, Dark Visitor, which tells of a possible cosmic disaster for Earth. Book's astronomer is reporting it will happen, based on his observations of small pertibations in Pluto's orbit. I.e. an invisible mass (probably a small black hole, which does not reflect sunlight) with slightly more than sun's mass is approaching the solar system. It will give a gravitational impulse to Earth, boosting Earth's excentricity to almost Mar's current value. Because the Earth is now "just on the edge" of a permanent ice age, it will rapidly enter an unending ice age, with most people dying in the first few years after the Dark Visitor has passed by our solar system. I wanted to scare the non-science, money-driven student, to at least ask if what the book was predicting was physically possible (It is.), hoping that perhaps he/she might become interested in science. Book is actually a highly disguised physic text. (Two chapters explain the mechanism of climate, before and after passage of the "Dark Visitor." Another speculates on what it might be - several different types of black holes, magnetic monopoles aggreates, cold neutron star*, etc. All of Keppler's laws are there and used numerically, but never named as that would tip the reader off to fact he was learning physics as he reads a scary story. Stellar evolution is discussed, especially that of the large first-genertion stars, when explaining some black hole sources, etc.) The book's astronomer asked his historian friend to write the book as he was too busy looking for gravitational lens effects (also explained) to refine the trajectory he derived from best fit (his three body simulation code is in an appendix) to Pluto's pertibations. The historian author naturally "dumbs down" the physics, without error or significant ommission, so even a real historian can understand. (My target reader would never knowingly open a science book.) More about the book, including how to read for free and the economic impact of Asia's rapid growth in science, at the web page under my name. (My objective was and is to promote the study of math and science, not make money or gain fame - the historian author is "Billy T" and astronomer is also not identified as he fears the CIA may kill him in an effort to keep public ignorant of the impending disaster long enough for the politically well connect to build their nuclear powered refuge, etc. - Why it appears as book, instead of journal article also.) -------------- *Also how pulsars function is explained to show how a near-by, old and now cold, approaching neutron star can avoid detection (as at least a weak pulsar, even if Earth is off the beam axis). I.e. the existance of the Dark Visitor is not already known by others, but only by this astronomer, who has been studing Pluto from his Southern Hemisphere observatory for years. (Currently, with its inclined orbit plane, Pluto is not easy to observe in the Northern hemisphere and precise measurements of its real, but small, orbit variations are difficult.)
Throughout my studies I have seen that Physics(maybe the sciences in general) have been undersubscribed. I am actually of the opinion that the next generation of Physicists will benefit from demand outstripping supply, as with everything else in this world. Maybe it will be at the cost of overall progress, but we work hard and are a member of one of (if not the) most intellectual contemporary pursuits, and deserve to get more benefits beyond just having the self-content of being one of the relative few.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
