Physics Quotes
Most Famous Physics Quotes of All Time!
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My background is in theoretical physics, and it's something very close to my heart.
Laser cooling opened a new route to ultralow temperature physics. Laser cooling experiments, with room temperature vacuum chambers and easy optical access, look very different from cryogenic cells with multi-layer thermal shielding around them.
In 1952, I was appointed Professor at the University of Bonn and Director of the Physics Institute, with very good students waiting for a thesis advisor.
Lester Germer was my first supervisor at Bell Labs. He was the Germer of the Davisson and Germer Experiment that is sometimes referred to in introductory texts on physics.
Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump.
In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.
On the recommendation of my professor in experimental physics, Paul Scherrer, I took an assistantship for electron microscopy at the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva in November 1953. This laboratory was animated by Eduard Kellenberger, and it had two prototype electron microscopes requiring much attention.
In the 1950s, the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva was lucky enough to receive each summer for several months the visit of Jean Weigle. He was the former professor of experimental physics at the University of Geneva.
Bohr's influence on the physics and the physicists of our century was stronger than that of anyone else, even than that of Albert Einstein.
Many applications of the coincidence method will therefore be found in the large field of nuclear physics, and we can say without exaggeration that the method is one of the essential tools of the modern nuclear physicist.
Originally I had planned to revert to nuclear physics there, in particular the structure of the deuteron.
We need senators who have studied physics and representatives who understand ecology.
Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology.
In politics, as in physics, every reaction is met with an equal and opposite reaction.
I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.
Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.
Theoretical physics is one of the few fields in which being disabled is no handicap - it is all in the mind.
I was already studying physics, but Sputnik steered me toward space, cosmology, the Big Bang, and elementary particles.
The new formula in physics describes humans as paradoxical beings who have two complementary aspects: They can show properties of Newtonian objects and also infinite fields of consciousness.
Nevertheless, if I have at times been able to make original contributions in the accelerator field, I cannot help feeling that to a certain extent my slightly amateur approach in physics, combined with much practical experience, was an asset.
My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.
Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.
I was a very good student. But I didn't have the latitude to study more. I was never allowed to do anything cross-disciplinary. Why can't an engineering student learn physics?
When I got started in my own engineering course, my interest in physics and maths was very high. After all, engineering is all about applied maths and physics. If I were to learn anything further in physics or mathematics, it simply was not there.
What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable.
There are physicists, and there are string theorists. Of course the string theorists are physicists, but the string theorists in general will not attend lectures on experimental physics. They will not be terribly concerned about the results of experiments. They will talk to one another.
In 1956, when I began doing theoretical physics, the study of elementary particles was like a patchwork quilt. Electrodynamics, weak interactions, and strong interactions were clearly separate disciplines, separately taught and separately studied. There was no coherent theory that described them all.
Would physics at Geneva be as good as physics at Harvard? I think not. Rome? I think not. In Britain, I don't think there is one place, neither Cambridge nor Oxford, which can compare with Harvard.
There's something called From 'Alchemy to Quarks,' which will teach you everything you have to know, you want to know, about physics.
One of the principal achievements of physics in the 20th century has been the revelation that the atom is not indivisible or elementary at all but has a complex structure.
It's hardly a secret that I'm skeptical of declarations that the aliens are out and about on our planet. Still, I try to answer every one of these mails and phone calls because, after all, it's not a violation of physics to travel from one star system to another.
My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.
In the late '30's when I was in college, physics - and in particular, nuclear physics - was the most exciting field in the world.
I have a problem with telling jokes about physics. Quite often the audience have no idea what you are talking about and, to be honest, I don't know what I'm talking about either.
My high school career was undistinguished except for math and science. However, having barely been admitted to Rice University, I found that I enjoyed the courses and the elation of success and graduated with honors in physics. I did a senior thesis with C.F. Squire, building a regulator for a magnet for use in low-temperature physics.
Following Rice, I went to Caltech for a Ph.D in physics, without any strong idea of what I wanted to do for a thesis topic.
There is a close analogy between organic chemistry in its relation to biochemistry and pure mathematics in its relation to physics.
Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist.
That's absolutely correct and in addition to that life just isn't an accident of the laws of physics. There's a long list of experiments that suggest just the opposite.
Physics tells us observations can't be predicted absolutely. Rather, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability.
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is the world's greatest pure physics thinktank, and it's located here in Canada, in Waterloo, Ont.
I was not an especially diligent student but nevertheless obtained a reasonable education in physics.
Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.
I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn't want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn't supposed to be able to draw - isn't that wonderful - so I made up a false name.
Often one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world as we see it. This world is not correctly described by the physics which assumes this postulate.
Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.
If I want to understand the laws of physics I have to first believe what I read about physics. I have to have faith in what I read.
The laws of physics should allow us to arrange things molecule by molecule and even atom by atom, and at some point it was inevitable that we would develop a technology that would let us do this.
You think Earth's gravity is really something when you're climbing the stairs. But, as far as physics goes, it is a pipsqueak, infinitesimal, tiny little effect.
I am a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University, where I teach an introductory class in cosmology. I see the deficiencies that first-year students show up with.
We live, I think, in the century of science and, perhaps, even in the century of physics.
I gained a first class degree in Physics at Imperial College London in 1968 and did research in solid state physics, but did not pursue meteorology matters until gaining an M.Sc. in astrophysics from Queen Mary College London in 1981, after which I investigated and attempted to construct theories of solar activity.
My recollection of the higher school certificate, which involved a practical exam in physics, was being confronted with an experiment involving a sort of barometer arrangement, wondering why I couldn't make it work.
I can only speak for particle physics. But it has become obvious that on the experimental side, there has been a huge evolution in the number of people who have to collaborate because of the gigantic size of the instruments used, but also because of the enormous task that is data analysis.
As an undergrad, I studied engineering physics at the University of Oklahoma, and all my degrees are from engineering departments. My father wanted me to join him in the oil-field business in Oklahoma, but I wanted to be a scientist.
When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.
Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.
The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.
The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.
The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
The development of physics, like the development of any science, is a continuous one.
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.
Julian Assange is self-consciously an individual. He thinks in his own way, primarily as a physicist, having studied pure maths and physics at university in Australia where he grew up.
As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists.
Quantum physics is one of the hardest things to understand intuitively, because essentially the whole point is that our classical picture is wrong.
I never got into 'Star Wars.' Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all.
If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it.
Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.
There are some parts I like about school. I like math a lot, and I like physics.
Ever since I was a kid, I've had an enormous interest in the sciences - everything from quantum physics to anthropology.
And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.
No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry.
It's obviously unfair to paint with a broad brush here, but the germ of an idea for a breakthrough in technology doesn't come out of a business school curriculum. It comes out of a laboratory or a math lecture or a physics tutorial.
Fly flight is just a great phenomenon to study. It has everything - from the most sophisticated sensory biology; really, really interesting physics; really interesting muscle physiology; really interesting neural computations.
The point here is that physics followed the data where it seemed to lead, even though some thought the model gave aid and comfort to religion.
Fascinated by history during my secondary education, then by physics and mechanics at the Ecole Polytechnique, I finally entered the national administration of mines in 1936.
In 1948 I was appointed to a Lectureship in Physics and in 1949 elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College.
When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world's formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.
It is just physics - who can argue with Newton and the first law of thermodynamics?
At school I briefly wanted to be a palaeontologist, but I was no good at chemistry and physics.
Much remains to be learned about stratospheric chemistry - and, in more general terms, about the physics and chemistry of the global atmosphere.
I didn't know what kinds of questions to ask in mathematics. In physics, I could see there were things that were known and things that weren't.
When I received my B. S. degree in 1932, only two of the fundamental particles of physics were known.
I have always enjoyed explaining physics. In fact it's more than just enjoyment: I need to explain physics.
Physics is perceived as a lonesome, nerdy kind of enterprise that has very little to do with human feelings and the things that excite people day-to-day about each other. Yet physicists in their own working environment are very social creatures.
I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses.
Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.
To me, what makes physics physics is that experiment is intimately connected to theory. It's one whole.
Physics is about questioning, studying, probing nature. You probe, and, if you're lucky, you get strange clues.
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