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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."
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.
discussing poetry purely by means of interpretive dance.
I don't know how you found out about their next lecture series, but I think it would be best if you kept that information to yourself until they get closer to releasing it.
Let me just say, though, that it's almost impossible to truly understand French Medieval poetry until you've seen it performed by a dude in a black unitard.
My personal opinion is that you CAN discuss the principles without going into more details. I think it's pretty easy to explain the concept of a Hilbert space with absolutely no knowledge of calculus, because it's just geometry and common sense.
It is problematic to teach physics without math, because you can get it horribly wrong. But you can explain graduate level concepts without math, and you can certainly describe the experiments that prove a formula works, even if you don't go through the complicated math involved in connecting the theory, formula and experiment.
It took some time to get from quantum physics to the specific heat of metals in the statistical physics course. But I can tell anyone on the street "look, if we measure the way metals conduct heat, we find that they behave in a certain way. we are only able to explain that if we use quantum physics to describe part of the electrons as a gas moving around inside the metal. classical physics fails.", and that should be enough for a basic idea.
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Would you be impressed if you didn't already know the subject?
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.
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
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.
Actually, I was working on the ATLAS detector that is in place at the LHC when I started writing for Bureau 42 almost 10 years ago. And I don't know how we profit off of something that's free...
My philosophy (which is in lesson nine, and probably should have come sooner; lesson one is more focused on why we need quantum mechanics, and the rest develops over time) is that the concepts and ideas of physics are represented by the math, but not defined by them. Math can certainly point out directions to look at and avenues to explore, and indicate connections between ideas we hadn't previously noticed, but as a student, I always found that the worst possible reason for a physics phenomenon was "because the math says so." This is about getting those ideas across for people who want to learn about the ideas. The ideas covered in the last two lessons are not typically introduced before grad school. (Lesson one starts at the high school level, which is all I wanted to assume from my audience.) Will you be a researcher when you're done? No. Will you have a better understanding of popular science articles relating to quantum physics? I certainly hope so.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com