Become a Theoretical Physicist
This is an article for anyone who is thrilled by the challenges posed by real science, and who are determined to use their brains to discover new things about the physical world.
Contents
Steps
- Make sure you are serious about learning the subject. Take every opportunity to learn more about physics and science in general.
- If you are in high school or earlier, take all the science classes you can get. It is likely that your high school classes will approach physics largely from a Newtonian perspective, but this is an important foundation for what you will learn later on.
- If you are at the university level, enroll in university classes in your chosen field.
- Explore physics on your own, too. There are many popular science books exploring topics in modern and classical physics in varying levels of detail.
- Read up on the history of physics and other sciences. Understand how new discoveries come about and how they often challenge societal and even scholarly assumptions about the workings of the universe.
- Study as much math as you can. While mathematics isn't physics, it is the language used in physics.
- Use the Internet as a resource, but be careful of what you find there. Always ask yourself who's making a claim and how they arrived at their results.
- For experimental results, examine the methods carefully for possible errors or biases. For theoretical results, check whether they tend to match the experimental results and look for exceptions to the rule.
- Try alternative approaches whenever possible. You will gain a better understanding of why physicists that came before did things the way they did, and in turn, you will better understand Physics itself.
- Buy Physics textbooks and do the exercises. Doing them will increase your understanding of the subject.
- Try to get to the point where you discover the numerous misprints, tiny mistakes, and more important errors these books make, then imagine how you would improve them.
- If you get good at spotting errors or writing texts, consider writing for a collaborative online textbook project. There are several out there, and writing for them can help both you and the readers become better physicists and scientists.
- Explore and study related subjects, too. Much of theoretical physics today explores phenomena at the atomic and sub-atomic level and at an astronomical scale, so a grasp of astronomy and chemistry will give you a better understanding of the subject. Not everything has to be done in this order, but this approximately indicates which ones come first.
- Languages
- Primary Mathematics
- Classical Mechanics
- Optics
- Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics
- Electronics
- Electromagnetism
- Quantum Mechanics (broad subject with several sub-disciplines)
- Quantum Topology
- Atoms and Molecules
- Solid State Physics
- Nuclear Physics
- Plasma Physics
- Advanced Mathematics
- Special Relativity
- Advanced Quantum Mechanics
- Phenomenology
- General Relativity
- Quantum Field Theory
- Super string Theory
- Get a university education in Theoretical Physics. Most research in Physics is done at a university level, in particular at universities known for the subject. Work towards a degree from one of those schools.
Tips
- Consider purchasing Stephen Hawking's' "A Brief History of Time" or "The Grand Design" for a low-down of the subject.
- Read Richard Feynman every time you feel like dropping out. He knows "The pleasure of finding things out."
- Buy theoretical physics books on Amazon or elsewhere.
- If you wait for a new version of a textbook to come out, the older versions drop in price to about two dollars.
- However, this also means that you could be studying incorrect information. Usually this isn't a problem, but some new discoveries disprove what is stated in previous textbooks.
- Recommended authors for books incorporating theoretical physics: Brian Greene, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku.
- Recommended further reading:
- The Archimedeans webpage has a lot of lecture notes on Physics and Mathematics.
- David Tong's (DAMTP) lectures in classical mechanics
- Bo Thide's (Uppsala) lectures in electromagnetic theory.
- Angel Uranga's lectures in String Theory._
- Michael Fowler's (Virginia) lectures in Quantum Mechanics
- Question folk knowledge and even results from other physicists.
- Never give up.If you are not getting the language of physics,use as much resources as possible.
Warnings
- Physics is intellectually challenging and physicists are still struggling to understand certain phenomena. Take this as a challenge and see where it leads you.
- Be prepared to modify or discard a theory entirely based on experimental results or observations of the physical universe.
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