Intro to Physics - ISP209 Fall 2008 The Mystery of the...

ISP209 Fall 2008
The Mystery of the Physical
World
Professor Joey Huston
3230 BPS

Syllabus
 Can be found at course website:
◆
www.pa.msu.edu/~huston/isp209_f08/
index.html
◆
the web version will be the official one

Let’s start
 …with the source of all knowledge, wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)
 Physics is the science of matter and its motion, as well as space and time.
It uses concepts such as energy, force, mass and charge. Physics is an
experimental science, creating theories that are tested against
observations.
 Broadly, it is the general scientific analysis of nature, with a goal of
understanding how the universe behaves.
 Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and through its modern
subfield of astronomy, it may be the oldest of all.
 Today, physics is a broad and highly developed subject. Research is often
divided into four subfields: condensed matter physics; atomic, molecular,
and optical physics; high energy physics ; and astronomy and astrophysics
 Most physicists also specialize in either theoretical or experimental
research, the former dealing with the development of new theories and the
latter dealing with the experimental testing of theories and the discovery of
new phenomena.
 Despite important discoveries during the last four centuries, there are a
number of unsolved problems in physics and many areas of active
research.

What is high energy physics all about
?
 In high energy physics,
we are attempting to
understand the
fundamental laws and
forces which govern the
universe, as well as to
discover all of its
fundamental constituents
 We do it at large
international laboratories
such as CERN near
Geneva, Switzerland,
where the Large Hadron
Collider is set to turn on
in a few weeks

…and no, the LHC is not

…nor will we
…but it’s still fun to watch videos

…but we did

…and this is the home of
First picture ever posted on the web
I’ll play some of their music this semester

Etyomology of physics
 Φυσιζ ( physis) is a
Greek theological,
philosophical and
scientific term usually
translated into
English as nature
 Aristotle spoke of
physics (the study of
natural things) in
contrast to
metaphysics (the
study of philosophy)
Plato Aristotle

Two
Questions
 The TWO most fundamental questions about the
universe are:
 What is it made of?
 How is it all held together?

Four Elements…
 The Hunt for the
answers to those
two questions has
been going on for a
very long time.
 It really started with
the Greeks.

…and Two Forces
 There were two fundamental forces:
◆
love
◆
strife
 This picture is a tad too simple
 We’ll try to see something of the current
complexity in this course
 …and keep track of some of the breaking
physics news

Forces
 We know of four fundamental
forces
◆
strong
◆
weak
◆
electromagnetic
◆
gravitational
▲
this is one of the
puzzles; why is gravity
so much weaker than
the other forces?