Quantum Physics For Everybody

fiziko writes in with a self-described "blatant self-promotion" of a worthwhile service for those wishing to go beyond Khan Academy physics: namely Bureau 42's Summer School. "As those who subscribe to the 'Sci-Fi News' slashbox may know, Bureau 42 has launched its first Summer School. This year we're doing a nine-part series (every Monday in July and August) taking readers from high school physics to graduate level physics, with no particular mathematical background required. Follow the link for part 1."

Comments

No mathematical background?

[The_Wilschon]

Grade school level math. The most complicated math in the series is this: “if a times b is less than 6, and we measure a to be 2, then b must be less than 3.” If you can follow that, you’ll be fine.

Physics that uses no more math than this is not graduate-level physics.

Re:No mathematical background?

[Monkeedude1212]

Perhaps they mean teaching the theory and not the applied physics?

I mean there was a whole lot of high school physics that didn't need any math whatsoever to understand, but the math simply helped its application.

And as a side note, All they layed out was a puzzle in Linear Algebra. Essentially, linear algebra branches off into some complex systems like encryption and game-theory, but in essence the math behind it is not any more complex than using constants to define variables.

Re:No mathematical background?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
    --Albert Einstein

Re:No mathematical background?

[memyselfandeye]

What's with all the negative comments? Anyone look at the lecture 1 PDF? Anyone actually do physics for a living?

As I write this, I'm staring at a whiteboard drawing of three equations in my den; E=mc^2, E=hc/lambda, r=2GM/c^2. They are there show my 13 year old niece how much energy a human body is equal to, a question she asked after watching K-PAX two nights ago on Netflix. Then she asked how much energy is in a single photon, then she asked how much energy is in a black hole. All questions a little girl might ask had she been exposed to basic ideas in modern physics, aka television.

Does she fully understand quantum mechanics, probably not. Does she she understand the jist with her pre-algebra background, sort of. Did she learn something and does she feel 'smarter' now... you betchya!

She annoyed my sister for hours about how a tree could power the whole world, or a tiny little bug could drive her car for years. My explanations, her worlds, and now a scientist in the making.

My point, you don't need to be able to derive Maxwell from F=ma, as my advisor's advisor did while backpacking across the Rocky Mts., to understand nature at its most simple, what you see is what you get, level. You also don't need to be some bearded mystic holed up in a university to appreciate, understand, or even contribute to our vastly poor knowledge of nature.

Re:No mathematical background?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think graduate level physics simply means this is the type of topics you get in graduate level physics, but it is not a graduate level education of said concepts. Love it or hate it that seems to be what they are trying to do.

This whole issue exposes the Slashdot science paradox. We're disdainful of the general public for being ignorant of science, and then when someone tries to introduce the general public to it all we can say is "it's not really physics without the math." Should we just tell people either understand it completely or don't try? Some people think the LHC will destroy the world. Shouldn't someone try to explain what they are doing and why it won't blow up the earth? Do you have to use math for that? Why can't you just discuss the concepts so they get the gist?

They are trying to teach concepts to educate the general public. You don't really need all the math to describe what's going on. They're not trying to train physicists just help laypeople understand. What's wrong with that? Not everyone needs to be a physicist.

Re:No mathematical background?

[DynaSoar]

Physics that uses no more math than this is not graduate-level physics.

I call bullshit, politely though. Not only can it be done, you've got to understand what you're doing well enough to step out of the higher level math. One of the most spectacular instances teaching I ever witnessed was at Purdue, where a class on relativity for non-science students was held, using nothing more than F = ma and a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Anyone can become an expert and talk expert to other experts and future experts. The higher the level the more jargonized and incomprehensible it becomes to everyone else. Worse, it becomes a sign of rite-of-passage, a badge of membership and a competition among its adherents, who constantly push the envelope on this. In doing so they become more and more isolated and insulated, viewing others as outsiders, people to stay away from if not look down on. They become socialized to not speaking outside their box, and pressure is applied from the group ion any member who does try to talk outside.

Anyone who can understand a field at the expert level but can explain it in non-specialized language without polysyballic words probably understands it far better than those in the specialists' club. An often misstated (but flexible enough to still work) quote from Ernest Rutherford is "An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid." There's people out there doing this thing which 'can't' be done. Go listen to them.

Re:No mathematical background?

[The_Wilschon]

I'm not saying that it isn't physics because you aren't using math. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I think that explaining physics on a conceptual level to non-scientists is a really, really good plan.

But, a graduate level education (in any field) is intended to prepare you to teach and to do novel research. You cannot teach physics, and you certainly can't do novel physics research, if you don't know any more than grade school math. It is simply impossible. So, the people who are creating what might well be a really excellent popsci series should not tell people that it is graduate level physics, because it is in fact something different from graduate level physics.

Argh. You are the last (currently) in a line of about a dozen people who have totally misunderstood my comment.

Re:No mathematical background?

[frieko]

I disagree. I didn't realize it until college, but physics without calculus is about is as satisfying as having someone describe a piece of music to you.

Re:No mathematical background?

[oliverthered]

you've spent far to long in school.

A driving instructor can teach someone to drive without knowing all the math behind it.

They can also do some amount of research, perhaps learning the math as they go along.

given that physics is still a theoretical part of science, by not teaching the current application and instead focusing on the more fundamentals you may well be equipping people far better to then go on to push physics in new directions that 'indoctrinated' individuals wouldn't even think of, because they don't even know that there is a box to think outside of.

now what was the name of that patent clerk again?

Re:No mathematical background?

[khchung]

My personal opinion is that you CAN discuss the principles without going into more details

And that discussion would be as useful as discussing topics like OO-programming principles with someone who has never written a line of code. Or like discussing the issues with MySQL with someone who has never used a database or written a line of SQL.

You can make someone think they "understood" the physics, when, in fact, he haven't understood anything. Much like how you "explain" how you fixed a particular tricky bug to the upper management.

Re:No mathematical background?

[adamofgreyskull]

now what was the name of that patent clerk again?

Perhaps you mean Albert Einstein? He was exceptionally gifted in mathematics and physics, from an early age, and studied both at the Polytechnic in Zurich. If you mean to imply that Einstein was just some schmo with only grade-school level ability in maths then you are barking up the wrong tree. You could also say that he was fairly "indoctrinated", in that he had knowledge of current (har-dy-har ;) Physics theories, so your implication that ignorance of prevailing theories freed him to embrace novel ideas more readily is also on somewhat shaky ground.

Also, your car analogy is pitiful, even for slashdot. A driving instructor can teach someone to drive without knowing all the engineering behind it, but his students aren't expected to know how to design cars at the end of his tuition. If they are capable of learning engineering outside of their driving lessons, then what benefit really did the driving instructor provide?

I do see some value in this middle-ground, teaching more advanced Physics concepts in a way that high-school educated people could understand. Your assertion that it is possible to teach Physics concepts without backing it up with maths is, I believe correct, and I was willing to defend your point of view but I think you pushed it too far. GP is correct, in order to describe any new theory they may come up with, based on the "physics"/philosophical education they've received, they will have to learn to back their physics up with maths. Which a math-less physics education will not give them. They could come up with some fantastical new theory, that "dark matter" is actually made of meringue and toffee, but unless they can back it up with maths, how can they expect to be taken seriously?

Similarly, they could go on to teach a math-less physics course, but without maths, their students would be just as encumbered as they were. Like the driving instructor's students, they would be able to teach what they had learned, but no more.

How do you talk about physics without mathematics?

[l2718]

Mathematics is the primary language by which physicists describe the world around us. Discussing post-16th century physics in any other terms is like discussing poetry purely by means of interpretive dance.

Re:So far, I'm not impressed

[blair1q]

Would you be impressed if you didn't already know the subject?

Re:No gedanken background

[Anonymous Coward]

That math may be why Quantum Physics waits until the graduate level. I've seen more people lost in the formulas than those who understood the concept without the math.

I'm going to be charitable and assume that the rest of the post is provided as a counterexample to this statement, and therefore not call you a fucktard for what follows.

Clearly, "Relativity" means "E = mc^2".

No, it does not. Perhaps you meant the longer "E = mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)". Even that, however is wrong. There are two core principles to relativity:

- light always travels at c in a vacuum, independent of reference frame
- the laws of physics are the same in every non-accelerated reference frame

Everything else follows from this; even the specific form of the Lorentz transformation can be determined (using these assumptions) with some simple math and thought experiments.

Very few people can explain the E, m, c, & what they represent. I'd like to hear someone say "Matter has energy proportional to its mass.", which is still not the most import aspect of Relativity.

This was true even before relativity; "0.5mv^2", remember?

For example, the speed limit c on particles insures that kinetic energy (K = 1/2*mv^2) cannot grow forever. Otherwise, energy could be created.

I rescind my opening statement. You, sir, are a fucktard. That isn't even CLOSE to what's going on. "Kinetic energy" (by the modern definition, total energy - rest mass) can and does grow without bound. Particles are regularly created in labs with "kinetic energy" vastly in excess of their rest mass. *Velocity* on the other hand, is strictly limited.

BTW, particles CAN be created via this process - hard X-rays (somewhat above 1 MeV energy) can photoproduce electron-positron pairs when interacting with matter.

These ideas help one to understand the Physics and the math that describes it.

Maybe for some people. You, on the other hand, fail it.

Re:Well, its possible

[jasomill]

But then, you're left with "A brief history of the universe", and I suppose, tack an exam (of course, abstracting from the math), and you now have a "graduate-level" course.

I humbly submit Feynman 1988 as a counterexample. Therein, the author describes the basics of quantum electrodynamics using what appears to be little more than grade school mathematics.

I write "appears to be" because his presentation amounts to an extremely casual exposition of elementary ideas from rather more advanced mathematics (complex and even functional analysis) in terms of "adding arrows."

This book stands out in my mind as perhaps the best "popular science book" ever written, precisely because Feynman understands, here as elsewhere, the difference between glazing over the mathematics — modulo mathematics, there's not really much "modern theoretical physics" to speak of — and glazing over the inessential (to casual exposition, certainly not to understanding, application, or development of theories!) calculational details.

Incidentally, complex algebra is, in a sense, "the algebra of scaling and rotating little arrows" Feynman describes. Put this way, it comes as no surprise that the things have so many practical applications. Forget "square roots of negative one," rotations often arise in applications, as do "functions of circular (periodic) variables."