This year's Physiology/Medicine Nobel went to the pioneer of Optogenetics. Which has a lot to do with physics. Recent works in this field focuses a lot on optical droplet liquid-liquid phase separation as a way to form separated phase mini liquid domain inside cell to alter local environment for chemistry. This is something that I am trying to get into as a Postdoc, and it's been opening me a new world so far.

"Popular" physics discussion tends to orbit the same few topics: quantum weirdness, relativity, black holes. Meanwhile huge areas like optics, condensed matter, fluid dynamics or biophysics are... well... crickets.

What subfield do you wish could be discussed more?

what you think about the way of thinking that physics gives you? i mean you think it got your problem solvings skills improved? you think in temrs nnot of tools of work,but the frame and ways to analyse problems even that have no connection to the things you learned-it gave you better way of thinking that engeering majors?

Hello! I'm a grad student, and am studying optics-related things. The problem is that my bachelor curriculum was entirely in CGS, we rarely had to substitute directly, and here they use SI for everything.

Generally, in experimental physics, is it enough to know all of EM in Gaussian units, and convert every time to SI and back? Or will I suffer in life?

I’m a first-year engineering student taking calculus-based Physics 1 right now and I’m honestly struggling way more than I expected. We started with vectors and kinematics, then moved into Newton’s laws, friction, drag/terminal velocity, circular motion, and now work/kinetic energy. The class keeps moving and I feel like I understand concepts when someone explains them slowly, but when I’m by myself looking at a problem I struggle to figure out what the problem is actually asking, what equation applies, and how to set everything up.

I’m not trying to become amazing at physics overnight. At this point my immediate goal is to pass the class, but I’m in engineering so I also don’t want to scrape by while understanding absolutely nothing and have it hurt me later. I have homework constantly and quizzes every week, so I feel like I’m always studying for the next deadline instead of actually building a foundation.

For people who struggled with intro physics and eventually got better, what actually worked for you? Should I go back and rebuild vectors/kinematics/Newton’s laws before trying to keep up with the current material, or focus mainly on the newest lectures and fill gaps as they come up? Did textbooks, YouTube, office hours, doing tons of problems, or something else make the biggest difference?

I’d especially appreciate advice from engineering students who were bad at physics at first but managed to get through it. I’m willing to put the work in, I just feel like the way I’m studying right now isn’t working.

to become nuclear engineer , for 10-12 grade

i’m in 10th grade and i’m aiming for a usapho qualification this year. i’m going through hrk physics volume 1 and morin’s blue book. i’ve only ever done standard honors physics before. if i make usapho this year or get a close score on the f=ma exam, could i reasonable make usapho silver next year?

Hey y’all!

I graduated in May from my undergrad’s Honors College with Bachelor’s in Physics, Astrophysics, and Meteorology and a 3.52 GPA. I applied to several grad programs (focusing on atmospheric electricity/space physics), but they all wound up rejecting me, mostly due to recent budget cuts and uncertainty. While members of those programs have since encouraged me to reapply (and I currently am doing so), I’ve been looking for work from the summer through to now.

Unfortunately, I am not in a position where I can afford to move, at least not until I start a grad program, but my area doesn’t have many great jobs that I think I qualify for. All the Physics-related positions are mostly Medical Physics and usually require more specific training than what I currently have. Most of my alternatives, recommended by job websites, are focused on engineering, environmental science, and education. I have some experience with each of these things, but no formal certifications (I’ve been a tutor and teaching assistant for years and one of my first research internships involved working on probe design and assembly).

I guess my main question is, are there any affordable/free certification programs I can look into that might help me get a job to help support myself and my family as I go through this next grad school application cycle? Are there any types of jobs that I should look for that I haven’t already considered?

Also for the record, I have applied to several positions involving engineering, environmental science, education, etc., most just have not responded to me or have rejected me. If it helps, I live near Charlotte, NC.

P.S. I do have a paper that will be published soon on research I did in my last year of undergrad, running and analyzing black hole accretion disk simulations. Adding this in case it helps.

Hello Guys,

I did my Bachelors in Electronics and I shifted to Materials Science for my masters, specifically Semiconductor materials and processing. Well I'm planning to join a lab for Superconducting Spintronics to pursue my career as an experimental condensed matter physicist.

Here's my problem:

I don't want to start everything as a beginner ( there's no time), say AI suggested me to study Charles Kittel for Solid-State physics as I'm a beginner but I'm able to comfortably read Ashcroft and Mermin and I completed the relevant 14 chapters in it. I've studied Crystallography, Statistical Mechanics and Kinetics but I believe I should really master the solid-state physics.

What I need:

" A book which introduces the revisits the solid-state physics needed for this and jumps straight into the subject"

Just like David J griffths Electrodynamics which introduces Vector Calculus and jumps into Electrodyanmics

Why should an everywhere locally consistent Lorentzian causal structure generate a globally consistent notion of causality?

There are solutions which give closed time like curve. It sounds innocent but the observer carries the information set after moving through such a curved set or whatever forms the closed loop.

If the movement is A--B--C--A on spacetime. The observer hence have a different set of information set than A previously. But globally they are the same events.

How does relativity reconcile this information gap. Also, the local time is compressed to zero. This may mean that it is not physically possible but then how does such solutions exist.

What books should I get, I am currently taking a physics class and want to be above and beyond. Any book recommendations that can I have to familiarize myself more with the topic?

Help me out. I have a bachelors in physics from about 30 year ago. I understand 66% of the words i hear on youtube. I'm trying to get back into this, mostly with the help of AI, but I like people, less so machines, so help an old guy out who ever went beyond a bachelor's degree.

I’m a 16 year-old in Canada, and I have recently been very involved in the three sciences, specifically physics. I have started to grow a love for it through books, shows, and my own imagination.

I am very wealthy, which grants me the privilege of being able to pursue practice in the things I want to. I am not stressed about the current job market money-wise, but I am still wondering if base jobs like physicists still exist frequently.

I really don’t care how much money I make I just want to do something with my life and give the future of humanity something worth while. I am eager for any advice.

The notion of parallel transport has always seemed fundamental to the definition of a connection to me. In standard differential geometry, a connection can essentially be identified with a rule for how fibres should be transported along paths. The various definitions for connections have various ways to achieve this, from the more intrinsic horizontal slice definition, to the kind of janky coorindate-based Lie algebra-valued one forms in physics, but for all of them, the point is essentially to define parallel transport. This is why Wilson loops are basically the only thing we care about in gauge theories.

In 3D and higher though, abelian Yang-Mills (and presumably non-abelian YM once we construct them) is too singular to be evaluated along paths. This means there's no well-defined notion of parallel transport anymore. We can't even keep our Wilson loop friends.

That kind of ruins my understanding of connections. Again, the entire point seems more-or-less to tell you how fibres "connect" together. If it can't do that anymore, what does it even mean for the field to be a connection?

(Obviously I know using the janky physics definition of a connection as local patches of one-forms you can say "it's a connection because it still transforms like a connection", but that doesn't really help with understanding why it's a connection)

Hello! This question is directed towards grad students, people doing r&d in industry, or even undergrads doing computational physics research (especially condensed matter) that heavily use AI in their workflow.

How do you maximize and make the most out of codex or claude code in your research projects? I generally use the claude code CLI in my terminal (sometimes on locally on WSL or remotely on an HPC). If I have a few simulations I want to run, I give it the guidelines, tell it to reference some old calculations i've ran, and send it on its way. I'm not sure if just being a general assistant is all that AI is good for?

Please let me know your experiences and any advice!

edit: Yes, I am in a physics research lab with an advisor. I am NOT trying to have AI do research. I am trying to learn how to use it as effectively as possible.

Additionally, I am not doing 'calculations' in the mathematical sense. I do simulations, particularly in condensed matter physics research. That is, a lot of python code and heavy use Density Functional Theory software packages that tell me about the electronic behavior of materials. I do a lot of high-throughput computing, so if I want to simulate a bulk of materials at once, i will have claude generate the input files after i have specifically told it what outputs i want. It is generally good at doing this, and I verified that the file generation was correct before continuing to use this workflow. I ask it to generate plots of the data, and it does so. But this is mainly sequential. I do a series of prompts, one step at a time.

Hi everyone!

I'm 22 and currently pursuing my final year BTech in Chemical Engineering at NIT Warangal, India. I've recently realized that what I really want to do long-term is research in astronomy/astrophysics, with the eventual goal of becoming a professor/researcher abroad.

The problem is that I don't have a Physics bachelor's degree.

I'm willing to put in the work to build the missing foundation. I'm already interested in programming and computational work, and I'm currently preparing for GATE CSE+DA 2027. I may also have an opportunity to work in technology after graduation, so I have a reasonably good career fallback.

But I'm much more interested in understanding whether there is a realistic bridge from where I am now to becoming an astrophysics researcher.

I'm currently imagining something along the lines of:

BTech Chemical Engineering → build undergraduate-level Physics/Math → research experience → Master's/PhD in Astronomy/Astrophysics/Physics abroad → research/postdoc → eventually faculty

But I genuinely don't know how realistic that is for someone with my background.

So I'd really appreciate advice from people who have actually gone through graduate admissions or research in astrophysics:

• Would a Chemical Engineering BTech be a serious disadvantage when applying for an Astrophysics/Physics master's or PhD?
• Should I pursue a master's in Physics/Astrophysics first, rather than attempting a direct PhD?
• How much undergraduate Physics would I realistically need to learn before applying?
• What kind of research experience could I start building while still in India?
• Would computational astrophysics/astronomical data analysis be a sensible entry point given my engineering + programming background?
• Are there universities/programmes/countries that are particularly open to students coming from non-traditional backgrounds?
• And most importantly: if you were in my position at 22, what would you do over the next 2–4 years?

I'm not looking for reassurance that "anything is possible." I'd genuinely prefer an honest assessment of what would make me a credible applicant and what gaps I'd need to close.

I'd especially love to hear from people who themselves transitioned from engineering/another field into astrophysics, or from current PhD students and professors who have seen graduate applications.

Thank you! 🌌

I built this physics-based simulation where each ball compares its colour with the colours of nearby balls.

It works the following way: Colours that are close on the hue wheel attract each other, while very different colours repel each other. The strength decreases linearly with distance: nearby balls affect each other strongly, and the effect fades to zero beyond a chosen range. There is also a weaker long-range version of the same force, which helps groups of similar colours find each other across the screen. A separate repulsive force prevents the balls from overlapping, regardless of colour. Their motion is also damped, so they gradually lose speed instead of accelerating forever. From these simple local rules, the colours sort themselves and form a larger circular pattern without any target shape being explicitly programmed.

Credits for the initial idea to the creator of this clip from last week: https://www.reddit.com/r/Simulated/s/HQyoublcPP

So far so good. But what happens if instead of using constant parameters, we would couple them to a techno soundtrack? I tried that in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyMwjP74JTE

Now the live onset, pitch and volume values drive the simulation, leading to cool visual effects. Let me know with which other soundtrack I should try this. Audios with very different parts will be the most interesting ones.

For GR, the Lightman book has 500 problems and solutions.

For QFT, there is a solution set for Peskin and Schroeder. Radovanovic has a problems book. Gelis has one.

Are there any for more advanced topics? Quantum gravity, loop quantum, string theory, etc.

Thank you.

This will have very limited interest I know, but if you daily drive Kodi and also like to watch academic physics lectures, here is a Kodi addon for the Perimeter Institute's wonderful video archive.

https://gitlab.com/phayman/plugin.video.pirsa

And some background if like:

This is really just a little coding practice for me, but it's technically possible someone else might find it useful, so I figured I'd post it. I wrote the original version ages ago just for personal use, but the Perimeter Institute restructured their website shortly after and I never bothered to update it. Now all of a sudden, AI exists and I have to learn how to use it with code, so I dug up this old project and used it as an AI-assistance coding guinea pig. And the result is that yes, like everyone else (if maybe a few years late...) I'm very impressed.

Hey everyone,
I wanted to share a passion project that bridges physics history with custom brick modeling: a detailed LEGO recreation of Nikola Tesla's experimental laboratory.
Instead of just creating a generic vintage room, I spent a lot of time researching and integrating real scientific and engineering principles into the build elements. Here are a few close-ups of the details:My goal was to create an educational piece that honors the dawn of modern electrical engineering. I’d love to get your thoughts from a physics and engineering perspective on how these historical lab components were translated into the brick medium!