ID:117740
 
So today I finished pretty much what's left of my orientation. Tomorrow they're going to show me how to not plagiarize and whatnot. Yeah, because I totally feel like getting kicked out of college to get an A on one lousy paper of OVER NINE THOUSAND. Whatevs.

The college itself is very nice. Because I am a po' person, I am staying off campus. It's a short bus ride away, so meh. And I get to ride for free because of my student ID. Life is skittles and life is beer.

My major is Physics. My plan is a Bachelor of Sciences in it. (Which means I am taking A TON of science and mathematics classes) I want to become a Professor of Physics. SCHOOL FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, YEAHHHHHHHH! I thoroughly enjoy it though, ya know? And my professor says that grad schools will PAY ME to go. So why not? Still in school, so my loans won't be due! (I hope)

Physics is the study of nature. Not in the way a botanist would study nature. No, while the philosophers say, "Why does this ball bounce higher than the other?" The Physicists go, "Yo, let's test this biz out!" (A joke I like to say is that while everyone was saying, "Which ball drops faster? The small one or the large one?" Galileo flips the table saying, "SCREW THIS! I'm going to test this stuff out in reality. Frigging philosophers. Always afraid to get their hands dirty." And everyone else is like, "WOAH WOAH WOAH... woah. You can't do that! If we get the answer then we'll have to go back to the chicken vs. the egg!")

Physics itself started out as Natural Philosophy. While the wussies were just discussing stuff, we said, "Let's do it!" We go out and actually uncover the world. And this is why I feel that philosophers are useless.

In all honesty I have little respect for humanities. And that's just me. It's cool to have differing opinions. I feel that if it doesn't directly make life easier for society, or if you're not digging something up from the ground, you're really wasting space. (Unless you're protecting people) For example - Interior Designers. Completely useless. Doctors - Completely Useful!

Speaking of which, did you know that the people who score the highest on the MCATs are Physics majors rather than the obvious choice of people who studied the medicine and whatnot? Pretty awesome stuff.

People who study physics don't really learn physics so much as they learn to think. And here's an example of what I mean.

You are given an initial velocity. You want to find out what velocity an object would have at the end of a set time period. (Classical Physics)

Naturally, your first guess is.

v = v. (Initial velocity is equal to Final velocity)

Well, that's fine and all. Without acceleration, your starting velocity would be the same as the ending velocity, no matter what. (This is, of course, assuming no form of resistance is present)

Well, you need to think about what acceleration is. It's a rate of change for velocity. (Calc nerds know this as a derivative). Well if you accelerate for a period of time, you are multiplying acceleration by time. The unit for acceleration is m/s^2 and the unit of time is seconds. Even if you didn't know what you were supposed to do with these two values, you could guess that you'd multiply them because if you divide m/s^2 by seconds you get m/s^3 (Which is actually the unit of a "jerk") Whereas if you multiply m/s^2 by seconds you get m/s (Which is the unit of velocity)

v = at

This formula works if you start from an initial velocity of zero m/s. But if there is a non-zero initial velocity, it must be considered. So you add it. (Why not subtract it? Because it doesn't make sense to subtract velocity unless you start at a negative velocity and you're not even subtracting it in principle. )

v = at + v.

at = m/s and v = m/s. You are adding m/s with m/s which works fine. The units all match up, so everything is cool.

A philosopher would have just tossed it out the window because it's not fun to find the answer to a philosopher. The answer has to hang out there so you can write books about how mysterious it is.

Meh. College!!!!
I got bored of reading and skimmed over the rest of it, it's my holiday leave physics for 9 days time XD. But i could help notice that you where mentioning SUVAT equations on byond, and thought it was pretty funny. lol.

Good luck to you :)
Haha, you're in the same boat as me then. Only difference is that I'll be heading into astrophysics instead of going the teaching route.

People who study physics don't really learn physics so much as they learn to think.

I completely agree with this statement. There was a saying that my physics professor drilled in the heads of our class when we learned new concepts, "Whatever you're thinking right now, it's wrong."

He also said if you tried to do physics through instinct, 99% of the time you'll be wrong. Boy was he right. :P
Alright, here's a question for you. See if you can get it without googling it-

An olympic runner finished the 100m dash in 9.77 seconds. It took him three seconds from the start to accelerate to his final velocity. How fast did he accelerate in those three seconds?
Don't be hatin' on philosophers.
Math and Physics are basically subdomains of Philosophy. Like how Chemistry is Physics on the molecular level.
Good-luck my American friend!