Questions tagged [soft-question]

Questions that ask about some aspect of physics research or study which doesn't involve the actual physics. In general, soft questions can be answered without using physical reasoning.

Soft questions are those that don't require the use of actual physics problem-solving skills or knowledge of the state of physics research to answer. In other words, soft questions are those which are of interest to physicists but are not actually about physics. They may ask about some aspect of physics research or study, such as history, learning techniques, publication advice, etc. though do note that there are other tags for several of these areas, such as and .

Many soft questions are just on the border of being off topic for this site; accordingly, the definition of the tag has fluctuated somewhat as the scope of the site has changed. If your question fits under this tag, it might be something that is worth bringing up in chat.

1328 questions
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2 answers

Reading the Feynman lectures in 2012

The Feynman lectures are universally admired, it seems, but also a half-century old. Taking them as a source for self-study, what compensation for their age, if any, should today's reader undertake? I'm interested both in pointers to particular…
53
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49 answers

Common false beliefs in Physics

Well, in Mathematics there are somethings, which appear true but they aren't true. Naive students often get fooled by these results. Let me consider a very simple example. As a child one learns this formula $$(a+b)^{2} =a^{2}+ 2 \cdot a \cdot b +…
C.S.
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27
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13 answers

Physics the Why vs. How question?

I've been told that a physicist never asks why and must always ask how. Is this true? Have all discoveries in physics been due to asking how? or have some been discovered by asking why?
Jitter
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22
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9 answers

Theoretical Physics - How to?

Although I doubt somewhat whether this question is really appropriate for this site, I hope it gets answered anyways. I guess, what I'm wondering is: How does one get to work as a theoretical physicist and - probably more importantly - what do…
Sam
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21
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2 answers

Post-doc advice for a low publication grad student

As a grad student, I have a single publication, a conference proceeding, to my name. So, my question is what do I need to do to obtain a post-doc position? Obviously, my references are going to be important. But, what other methods are available to…
rcollyer
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16
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4 answers

What are the best open-access journals in physics?

I would like to support open-access journals by choosing to publish in journals which allow readers free online access. Ideally I would also like to retain copyright instead of signing it over to the journal. What are some of the better…
nibot
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15
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9 answers

Is it possible to work on physics independently outside academia?

The traditional physics career is an academic job at some university, with the eventual goal of becoming a tenured professor. Is it possible for a mostly self-educated outsider working outside academia to come up with significant results in physics?…
user2738
14
votes
8 answers

Why beauty is a good guide in physics?

Dirac once said that he was mainly guided by mathematical beauty more than anything else in his discovery of the famous Dirac equation. Most of the deepest equations of physics are also the most beautiful ones e.g. Maxwell's equations of classical…
user1355
13
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4 answers

What does it mean to say that the electron is a near-perfect sphere?

It's announced that researchers at Imperial College London has found that the electron is almost a perfect sphere. The popular articles all have a nice photo of a billiard ball, etc. It is reported that they found this by measuring the "wobble" as…
12
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9 answers

What objective criteria distinguish between valid science, fringe science and pseudoscience in physics?

Plenty of research activity in physics have been vigorously opposed by their opponents as pseudoscience or fringe science, while other research are mainstream. It is possible some topic is pseudoscience if the experts claim it is so, but they could…
Gong
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12
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Can a web community write papers?

the internet has changed science drastically. Not only in terms of distributing knowledge e.g. via online encyclopedias as wikipedia and freely available sources of publications as arXiv but also as a tool for communication through email and lively…
11
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1 answer

What strategies can a researcher use when confronted with a long and complicated symbolic expression?

When doing research in theoretical physics, a frequent task one encounters is trying to express some physical quantity as a function of other quantities. A lot of times this can't be done analytically, but even when it can - it sometimes results in…
Joe
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11
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7 answers

Why are the physical sciences described perfectly by mathematics?

Why are the physical sciences described perfectly by mathematics?
Argus
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11
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7 answers

What jobs can you get after Studying Physics at University?

What types of jobs can you get after a degree in Physics? My sister is choosing her course and thinking of doing physics but isn't sure what she can do after it.
h00j
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11
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5 answers

How does the research in theoretical physics differ from mathematics

I would like to know what is the difference between research in theoretical physics and pure mathematics. In particular, what does a theoretical physicist actually do all day long for his research? In other words, what does research in theoretical…
user10024
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