# Tag Info

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can we get a false positive of a theory being right just because the instruments doing the measuring have that theory built in? This sounds dangerously close to a contradiction-in-terms, so let me carefully read you as saying that the instruments doing the measuring "are interpreted according to that theory," possibly by calculations that sit between ...

15

You have to give a concrete example. Experiments are designed so as not to depend on what they are trying to measure. Your speed of light example is not good. Was not the whole scientific community in a dither because superluminal neutrinos were supposed to have been measured? Until it was found that there was a malfunction in an instrument? In any case ...

4

This is, as you stated in the title of the question, a problem of definition. In order to be useful for Physics (and most Science), there is a key characteristic of the properties we use: they have to be objectively measurable. As dmckee stated in a comment to the question, the property does not only need to be able to be put in scale (as you said, you ...

3

I am recent graduated physicist. Assuming that you are looking for rigorous learning instead of just popular science, I would like to recommend a few books to get started in this amazing field of knowledge. Before you learn some hard Calculus, you can read this books: Physics for Scientist and Engineers. Tipler & Mosca. This books are the easiest ...

2

Can we tell when an established theory is wrong? Not always. And not everybody. Sometimes one or more people can, and they explain why. But other people won't entertain it, then the "established theory" gets even more established. I was reading the following answer from this question: In physics, you cannot ask / answer why without ambiguity. ...

2

Axiomatic theories started with geometry, back at the time of Pythagoras. At that time mathematicians and philosophers were one and the same thing. There is a rumour that even Homer was a mathematician. Education was a one throw business at that time. How did geometry start? It started in the flat spaces of Egypt and Mesopotamia where it was necessary to ...

2

It is pretty much simply a short way to notate both vector field operations by looking at $\nabla$ as a vector operator by writing $$\nabla=\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial x},\frac{\partial}{\partial y},\frac{\partial}{\partial z}\right)$$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$, or equivalently \nabla=\frac{\partial}{\partial ...

1

As someone who did a degree in physics before moving into electronics and s/w R&D, my experience would suggest "yes". Over the years I have been involved in a number of projects that could be classified as experimental physics, and in all cases knowledge of electronics was a vital part. At the very least a physicist should be able to read a circuit ...

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Here's a paper for you to ponder on: Teaching electromagnetic field theory using differential forms Excerpt from the abstract: computational simplifications result from the use of forms: derivatives are easier to employ in curvilinear coordinates, integration becomes more straightforward, and families of vector identities are replaced by ...

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As somebody who works in the field of chaos theory (for whatever that’s worth), I confirm Dmckee’s assessment: There is no reasonable relation to any concepts from chaos theory. There is, however, an attempt in your quote to relate this to the phenomenon of criticality – which is not chaos theory, but like chaos theory is related to the field of complex ...

1

The uses of this two theories are completely different. Statistical Mechanics is used to see how by modelling the behavior of microscopic constituents you can predict the macroscopic phenomenas that you observe. On the other hand Many Body Theory uses first principle techniques to see what happens microscopically when you have large no of particles in your ...

1

Yes. Assuming that you have two independent and uncorrelated sound sources, then the intensity observed will be the sum of the intensity of the two sources. Whether they were summed electronically before being turned into sound, or whether they were generated as separate sound waves that are summed when they reach your ear, is irrelevant. Whether that ...

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