REMINISCENCES OF PHYSICS AND PHYSICISTS

Physics is concerned with the interactions of energy, matter, space, and time, in order to discover the underlying mechanisms that underpin all phenomena. The word "physics" comes from the Greek word "phúsis", which means nature. Physics seeks to comprehend the natural world around us at its most fundamental level. It emphasizes the use of quantitative laws to do this, which could be valuable in other fields that want to push the performance boundaries of present technologies.
Physics knowledge...

The principle of superposition applies to gravitational forces of objects that are sufficiently far apart. It states that the net gravitational force on a point object is the vector sum of the gravitational forces on it due to various objects. The principle helps calculate the force by listing the individual forces and then vectorially summing them up. However, it should be noted that the principle of superposition is not always apparent. In the presence of a second force, the first force could...

The nature of light has been a subject of inquiry since antiquity. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton performed experiments with lenses and prisms and was able to demonstrate that white light consists of the individual colors of the rainbow combined together. Newton explained his optics findings in terms of a "corpuscular" view of light, in which light was composed of streams of extremely tiny particles traveling at high speeds according to Newton's laws of motion.

The mechanical energy E of a system is the sum of its potential energy U and the kinetic energy K of the objects within it. What happens to this mechanical energy when only conservative forces cause energy transfers within the system—that is, when frictional and drag forces do not act on the objects in the system? Also assume that the system is isolated from its environment; in other words no external force from an object outside the system causes energy changes inside the system.
When a...

Scientists frequently use models to help them comprehend a specific collection of phenomena. In physics, a model is a condensed version of a physical system that is too complex to study thoroughly. One such example is the light wave model; unlike water waves, light waves are typically invisible to us. Nonetheless, it is helpful to think of light as being composed of waves, since investigations show that light behaves like water waves. Since it is impossible to visually see what is genuinely...

When solids, liquids, or condensed gases are heated sufficiently, they radiate some of the excess energy as light. Photons produced in this manner have a range of energies, and thereby produce a continuous spectrum in which an unbroken series of wavelengths is present.