I Didn't Learn Anything from My Physics Education

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I'm not sure what you mean. My goal is to understand physics theory; in order to do that, I need to understand precisely what scientists are saying when they mention atoms. If somebody is basing an entire theory on the existence of something that is not obvious, then I need to at least know their reasoning for believing that it exists before the rest of the theory makes any sense. I don't have to believe it myself. On the other hand, if it's just an abstract model, I need to know what about the physical phenomenon motivated the selection of that particular model; otherwise, it's just an arbitrary choice in my eyes.

I can go through the motions of doing experiments without that understanding, but I wouldn't be able to interpret the results in a way that jibes with physics as it currently stands.


I didn't say that they don't exist.



I disagree with you. Digging into the precise meaning of theoretical elements can only help me learn more deeply. And I can't learn much if the basic explanatory systems seem like random constructs.

Ok, nevermind. I just read your latest post and see that you are making fun of me.

Last edited by starkid on 23 Jan 2014, 4:04 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I did, and I could understand the topics rather well; it's accepting the fundamental theories I tend to have trouble with. Experiments only show that a certain physical setup will produce a certain result; theories tend to invoke abstractions that cannot be illustrated experimentally.

For a very simple example, an experiment with magnets will show that they attract and repel each other depending on which poles are involved. But there is no way whatsoever to see from this experiment that the phenomenon of magnetization is caused by electrons organized in domains (if I remember that correctly).

I think that my problem is that I cannot take the abstractions for granted; they seem arbitrary and therefore "not real" to me.


Astrophysics



Yep, I've found that out the hard way.

Not at all! I am baffled by your approach and I don't think I really understand your objections.

It seems to me that the history of Dalton, Thomson and Rutherford's work would answer a lot of your objections. Thomson, trying to understand what atoms might be, came up with a bad model. Subsequent experimentation proved that that model couldn't be right, so alternatives were proposed and experiments conducted...the model showing electron orbitals around proton/neutron neuclei emerged and has served very well.

What they knew and hoped to learn is documented. Is that not the kind of thing you are saying they don't teach?

What do you think of Feynman?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsdCzujHqAk

He uses a lot of metaphorical, figurative language and draws complicated analogies in the service of exploring ideas about atoms, particles and molecules. Does that kind of thing work for you, or is it no good?

Ok. My mistake.

Ok, but why just assume that matter is divided into atoms at all? Let me give you an example. Suppose you know about magnets and how they attract/repel, but don't know how or why. I propose to you a theory that invisible fairies push and pull the magnets. My theory comes complete with an appropriate mathematical apparatus, and when I do experiments, I show that my hypotheses about when the fairies will push the magnets together (attraction) and when they will pull (repulsion) are correct.

Do you just accept that theory, or do you wonder why I had to bring invisible fairies into it? That's somewhat how I think of atoms: they might make a nice tidy theory, but are they justifiable theoretical elements in and of themselves, and to what extent?



Yes, but the motivation also. Why atoms? Why were they such a widely accepted hypothesis, even early on? Did people just latch onto a cool idea, or was there something particular about physics that made them seem a more apt explanation than other possible explanation? Do people just decide to interpret their experimental results in a way that is consistent with atomic theory, or is there something inherent in the experiment that lends itself to atomic theory?

But people had loads of other explanations including fairies, angels, and the "four elements: earth, water, wind, fire" and all sorts of other stuff. But none of those approaches were very useful.

The initial conception of atoms was intuition, but not just a guess--informed intuition by people who were trying to understand reality. It was plainly evident in the natural world that some things were mixtures of other things but some things seemed to be made only of their essential stuff. The first atomic idea, was just that-the smallest particles of pure stuff.

The rest is tens of thousands of years of trial and error and experiments in record keeping and knowledge management.

Actually, the word "Atom" was first coined by a man named "Democritus" (~460 to ~370 BCE), who was an Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. The word "atom" is derived from the Greek word "atemnos", meaning "indivisible" (a-, "not" and temnō, "I cut"; --> "I cut not").

So that puts the word "Atom" as originating about 2430 years ago, and not "tens of thousands".

Besides, we're only about 12,000 years after the end of the most recent mass glaciation event (or "Ice Age" - a misnomer), which lasted between 70,000 and 180,000 years.

My point was that our ancestors have been gathering and exchanging information about the properties of different materials they encountered for tens of thousands of years. There is visible information transfer from region to region across millennia in the archaeological record.

Evidently people got much better at this after developing writing.

But if Starkid wants to ask the question: "Where did the idea of elemental stuff come from?" then the accumulated knowledge of material properties stretching back into remote prehistory undoubtedly informed the people who created the first written theories about the nature of things.

Speaking of which, I quite like Heraclitus' version, too.

Edited to add, I am thinking of Lucretius and writing Heraclitus. My trouble with names is not limited to the names of the living, unfortunately. The book I was thinking of was "De Rerum Natura."

The OP's gripe seems to be a philosophical gripe more than anything else, epistemology I think. Epistemological problems need to be tackled by the Philosophy department, not the Physics department.

Wow I didn't even know that happened and I'm majoring in Chemistry lol... must have just missed it somehow. Also after reading the article, they detected the force between the atoms not the actual atoms themselves. That is why the bonds look like the bonds of chemical models. The first molecule is a really good choice for this type of thing as it has all of those triple bonds.

I kind of feel the same way about physics. Modern physics is too theoretical and mathematical for me. Maybe if I was better at math I would like physics more, and I'm not bad at math I'm better than average. I took calc 1 and calc 2/3 as a freshman last year without too much difficulty.

Last edited by daar on 24 Jan 2014, 4:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

How so?

Somone`s been reading too much Hume!

.... or not enough.

Should have got an Engineering degree.

Then you can sit and wonder maybe in the future you can figure out the math behind all this stuff while you get the thing to work good enough.