Beauty of Physics

By: Aamir Rizwan.

a) Reasoning upwards

In physics, you have to reason upwards, instead of downwards. It still shocks me how many people don't
reason upwards when faced with problems in their own lives. If you have a dilemma, it's fairly easy to
work backwards and find the root cause. Just follow your feelings.

It's more difficult, however, to work upwards from that feeling back to your dilemma. Why? Because there
are infinitely more variables you have to face. You could have arrived at your dilemma in more way than
one. If I'm $100 short, and I trace back only to realize that I'd spent $15 on a haircut, $20 on gas, $25 on
lunch, $5 on that quick snack on the way home from work, and $35 for my internet bill so I could respond
to this question, then it's fairly obvious where all my money went. Working upwards, however, I realize
that there are other things I could have spent my money on to lose $100. Maybe I brought a lunch to work
that day, and so I split up my $25 into a bunch of other smaller purchases. Maybe I drove more to make
those purchases, and so I spent more on gas.

When you reason upwards, you realize that everything depends on something else. In physics, the more
variables that are added to the initial conditions, the harder it gets to predict the outcome. The skill you
learn here is to make probabilistic predictions, and to accept that, sometimes, you really can't know
everything. Physics forces you to deal with uncertainty.

b) Think creatively

You've got to be able to think creatively in physics, or you probably won't find it much fun. Physics
becomes "plug n' chug" when there's no creative thinking involved.

When faced with a problem, you first have to visualize it. Lots of people have poor visualization. It's not
because they were born that way, however. As kids, we all visualize, a lot. But, as we get older, people tend
to allow themselves to listen to other people's noise and forget how to think for themselves.

It's so easy to get home from work, microwave a dinner, put on the television, pull out your phone, and
"relax". How can you relax when a machine that shoots out microwave radiation made the food you're
consuming, a 40" screen on the wall is shouting at your face, and your brain is reading meaningless
information from a thousand different sources on another screen you're holding in your hand.

Slow. Down.

Physics forces you to slow down. You can't solve this equation if you're thinking about a hundred other
things. You need to visualize it, and give it your undivided attention. Once you've eliminated all the
unnecessary noise, you'll actually be able to think for yourself again.

You then simulate the problem in your head, and explore possible solutions. The math comes later. I
mean, if you get really good at it, you'll be able to visualize the math as well, but leave the "plug n' chug"
for after you've solved the problem. Right now, you're just focusing on creatively exploring possibilities.

Physics forces you to slow down and think for yourself.

When you understand physics, then you can understand the world around you. And I mean really
understand it.

You can spot connections that others would miss. You can see patterns and predict the evolution of
complex systems.

You can have richer, more joyful relationships with people. You can put yourself not only into other
people's shoes more easily, but into the worlds as well. You can see Earth for what it really is: a
unremarkable sphere made out of heavy elements that's trapped within the gravitational well of the Sun
caused by its mass warping the fabric of space-time.

Oh, did I say unremarkable? I meant SO. TOTALLY. REMARKABLE.

Isn't it remarkable that the universe obeys logic and physical laws?

Isn't it remarkable that we can understand those laws and recreate them on Earth?

Isn't it remarkable that the conditions of the universe are in such a way so that atoms could form complex
structures at lower temperatures that would allow them to, over time, produce human beings?

Isn't it remarkable that your body has code inside of it that was responsible for the way you turned out
and the way you interact with the world?

Isn't it remarkable that, using only one fundamental force (electromagnetism) we're able to see what the
universe looked like when it was only 380, 000 years old?

Isn't it remarkable that, last month, we measured directly, for the first time, the gravitational waves
emitted by two black holes colliding billions of years ago?

Isn't it remarkable that we can control the flow of electrons so as to form logical circuits that, when scaled
up, can compute information and connect the entire world through one, massive global network called the
Internet?

Isn't it remarkable that we've been given the gift of existing on this pale blue dot?

Physics teaches you empathy.

It's fundamental. It's the most fundamental thing you can study that is inherently related to reality. (Math
is arguably more fundamental and can be related to reality, but it's not required to be so. If a piece of
physics isn't related to reality, it's incorrect.) If you can figure something out about physics, it is a basic
insight into reality.

In contrast, other sciences are conditional. Almost all the biology we as a species currently know is based
on certain assumptions: life is carbon-based and requires water. Is that actually true? Probably not, but
it's the case on our planet, and it's very difficult to study on other planets, or to come up with testable
hypotheses about what non-carbon-based life would be like.

Chemistry is less conditional than biology, but much of our knowledge is still focused on situations that
are somewhat similar to above-ground Earth.
If you want to know how the world works on the most basic levels, you want to know physics.

Regarding physics itself, the coolest part, I think, is how you can take the Universe and ultimately distill it
down to regular sets of mathematical laws. In theory, everything that ever happens in the Universe,
including every detail of our lives, ultimately results from the eternal working-out of the evolution of some
form of “state” data under a mathematical equation, although the final equation is not one we know of yet.

It is obviously hopeless to actually carry out the reduction in practice, because there is so much
interaction and so many parameters (just for the Earth, there is about 10501050 — that is,
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, interacting atoms, all
governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, and then there’s the interaction of that with the rest of the
Universe, without which it would have a totally different history now, and we might not have ever
existed.). But in theory all is governed by those underlying mathematical equations. It may not be entirely
deterministic — quantum theory can be interpreted either in a nondeterministic (Copenhagen) or in a
deterministic (many worlds or Bohm interpretation) way, but that’s where it “all comes from”.
On a more metaphysical level, it’s a way to “know God”. Unlike many scientists who are atheists, I believe
in a God. But I don’t believe in a dogmatic concept of that from organized religion. That is a whole story in
itself — but basically it comes down to that I eventually rejected the notion of “infallible truth sources”. I
don’t consider the concept of God to be a scientific one, but a religious one.

I do not think that religion or “the spiritual” is to be denied because to do so is to deny an essential part of
human nature. (Can religion be abused? Sure, but any part of human nature is subject to creating evil.)
One knows God by understanding God’s handiwork, the Universe, and the laws which allow it to unfold
the way it does. Certainly it seems that God is very, very mathematical in the way Sie (a gender-neutral
word because I don’t like patriarchal religion) dictates the workings of reality. If it turns out that there’s
an afterlife and I could meet God or a representative of His there, I would want to ask a lot of questions
about the Universe and how/why it was designed the way it was (why the heck are there 2 whole extra sets
of quarks & leptons that (excluding the neutrinos) just exist for a brief fraction of a second, for example???
As well as ones not physics-specific like “why did you make the continents of Earth shaped the way they
are?”), and also if those damn wormholes really were possible after all :)

So that’s why I like to study physics. The one last reason is: it’s a lot of fun to do, both working out the
math and doing experiments.