Over at Gene Expression, Razib is collecting ten-word summaries of evolutionary theory, with follow-up posts here and here. Because I’m completely shameless about this sort of thing, I’m going to swipe the idea, and apply it to physics.
Of course, physics as a discipline covers a bit more conceptual territory than “evolutionary theory,” so it’s probably impossible to boil down to a single statement of ten or fewer words, but Razib had to cop out as well, settling on ten ten-word statements. So let’s take that as a goal, and ask, following the original phrasing: If you had 10 words or less, what would you have the public master (and I mean internalize, not spit back as a creed) about physics?
I don’t have a complete answer for this, but I’ll offer a few suggestions below the fold. If I get enough interesting comments, I’ll try to compile a big list in a future post, with fame and fortune sure to accrue to those who come up with the best phrases.
A good starting point (especially as I’m feeling like a lazy blogger today) is probably the volume titles for Thomas Moore’s Six Ideas That Shaped Physics course:
- Conservation Laws Constrain Interactions
- The Laws of Physics are Universal
- The Laws of Physics are Frame-Independent
- Electric and Magnetic Fields are Unified
- Particles Behave Like Waves
- Some Processes are Irreversible
As you might expect from a text designed for a two-semester intro course, those volumes cover a pretty wide range of physics, and do a reasonably good job of encapsulating the key ideas. For a deeper understanding, you’d probably want to revise #1 to encompass Noether’s theorem— “Symmetries lead to conservation laws, and conservation laws constrain interactions,” maybe. Numbers two and three could be combined into a single statement: “The laws of physics are universal and frame-independent.” Number five could probably use an “and vice versa” at the end, and thermodynamics (number six) is famously summed up as “You can’t win, you can’t break even, you can’t quit.”
That would get things down to five short statements, leaving five more. What else should be included?
Since Physics is the foundation of all hard sciences, you could make the argument,
“Physics is the study of Science”
If that is too vague, then hows about
“Physics studies interactions between matter and energy”
You can’t get too specific in 10 words.
The how of what was done where and when but never by whom.
Physics constitutes collected empirically survivable symmetries-constrained predictive mathematical models.
The foregoing omits string theory. Tough love.
You cannot win.
You can only break even on a very cold day.
It never gets that cold.
Not Even Wrong has a quote from David Gross which is generic to all science (and weighs in at 14 words), but struck me as something which really desperately does need to be internalized by the public: making predictions that can be tested to better and better precision over the years.
If the goal is conciseness, there is always Feynman’s “All matter is made of atoms in constant motion” which says a good deal in 9 words.
Feynman’s (in the previous comment) is a possible definition of matter, not a characterization of physics.
Question to Chad: All of physics, including classical, or only what what we know to be right (correction: what we know not to be wrong)?
Assuming that physics is essentially quantum physics (both relativistic and non-) this is all there is to it:
Physics calculates probabilities of possible measurement outcomes given actual outcomes. (10 words, if I counted correctly)
“Almost everything is four dimensions, four forces, and four particles.”
Of course some will focus on how that is inaccurate, but that’s why it says “almost”, even if all this dark energy and dark matter deserve more than that. I know the tetrologies aren’t the final word any more than the Greeks were right about there being only four elements, but I think it’s a remarkably simple picture of what could have been so much more complicated. I like it that the up and down quarks didn’t spoil this when they replaced the proton and neutron. Something else will, but why not live in the beauty of the moment instead of looking toward the ugliness of old age?
I’m less excited about working in those 6 principles, in 10 words, 1.67 words per principle? Maybe this:
“Physics has rules, empirical, everywhere, always, unimaginable, except by math.”
Of course if you make it ten statements of ten words each you can put in so much more information, but who would want to quote that? You might as well learn the math then.