# Tag Info

0

For the most part, you are right. Physics is tough, and in many ways high school physics is the hardest because it is the first introduction to a new and difficult way of thinking. Furthermore, teachers are under pressure to complete the curriculum. And there's always the possibility that the teacher him/herself does not have a firm grasp of the subject. ...

0

sorry to hear that things are frustrating. I don't think you need the Huygen principle for the double slit experiment. Take a look at the diagram below... The diagram shows two rays from a double slit experiment. The path lengths are slightly different from the two slits. In one case the waves arrive in phase and you get the bright fringe - constructive ...

2

It is an edge dislocation. Compare: to: TEM tracks dislocations in graphene Notice that the yellow loops have 5 and 7 edges, respectively, compared to the usual six.

2

A firm understanding of classical physics is essential. This means understanding the qualitative and quantitative aspects of: 1) Newton's three laws of motion (Kinematic and Dynamic perspective) 2) Rotational motion dynamics 3) Electromagnetism 4) Newtonian mechanics (Newtonian gravity) 5) Principle of superposition and waves 6) Classical thermal ...

0

Books generally teach sine or cosine waves because according to Fourier thereom any wave can be written as linear combination of sine or cosine waves. FOURIER THEOREM A mathematical theorem stating that a periodic function f(x) which is reasonably continuous may be expressed as the sum of a series of sine or cosine terms (called the Fourier series), each ...

2

The sine function is just an idealized way to approximate wave motion, and indeed suitable for teaching the basic principles of how waves propagate, reflect and interfere with one another to create standing waves, but as with any real physical system, including the motion of waves, the closer you look the more you see non-ideal behavior. For surface waves ...

2

As a profession and as a society, it is most certainly not a must. For an individual that depends on their individual situation. On absolutely any day of the week I'd rather students learn approximation theory, and learn it well rather than learn about a delta-epsilon definition. A useful skill is something, whereas a little bit of terminology and ...

2

Science education should not only be about giving your students a small amount of tools they will most certainly use, but it should be about teaching to find and understand these tools even when you are not around. If you teach a subject to people that do not want to become an expert, but who might need it somehow, you want to try to teach it in a way that ...

2

This is a generic problem physicists face, we can often do with less rigor, but not always and that causes some in the field to not know what they should know. As David Hilbert put it: "Physics is too hard for physicists". So, unfortunately, we do need to learn the rigorous definition of the limit, despite the fact that in most practical cases we'll not use ...

1

It appears that you are looking for the "big picture" of quantum mechanics, not the ability to do extensive calculations. For this, in my opinion, you should start by understanding observables with two possible values (like spin in a particular direction, which is either up or down), rather than observables with infinitely many possible values (like ...

-3

Yes, you can. Quantum physics is very accessible, and with basic knowledge of calculus you can learn.

1

To answer the second part first, a voltage difference between two poles creates an electric field. Charged particles feel a force in an electric field and are therefore accelerated towards one of the poles ($e^-$ towards the positive pole, positive ions for example towards the negative pole). You can imagine such a ciruit as a plate capacitor: as soon as ...

2

If you have a good grasp on the relative scales of other things in physics, you may be able to relate the wavelengths to those. Otherwise, your best bet is just to memorize the wavelengths (or frequencies). Since $f = \frac{c}{\lambda}$ for light, you'll be able to figure out the frequencies if you know the wavelengths. Here are some things I use to help ...

Top 50 recent answers are included