Advice For Future Physicists

Optics Table. Something you might see as a physics major. Rhett Allain

I recently received an email from a high school student. It basically went something like this (I am rewriting it in my own words):

“I am currently a student in high school and I aspire to be an uber awesome theoretical physicist studying quantum mechanics. However, I have a problem. I feel that my high school physics class isn’t properly preparing me for the future. What can I do?”

Actually, I changed the email to reflect the ideas of multiple emails from different people. But you get the idea. What can a young student do to prepare for the future as a physicist?

Maybe high school physics isn’t so bad. Yes, it seems like you are stuck on kinematics equations and simple machines for an eternity. Yes, that can get sort of boring. Maybe the rest of the students are bored too. That happens sometimes. However, you have to walk before you can run. Right?

Let me give an example from my own kids. I have two daughters that really like gymnastics. If you aren’t familiar with the sport, there is one event that I want to discuss: the vault. The basic idea is that the athlete runs at vault table, hits a springboard, pushes off the table with her hands then ends up doing something cool (there are different vault moves you could do). Got it? Surely you’ve seen a video of this from the Olympics or a college gymnastics meet.

Well, when you first start off in gymnastics you get to compete all four events including vault. At lower levels, the vault event doesn’t even use a value table. Yes, this looks nothing like a real vault. But the point is that you can’t do the super awesome high level vaults right away. It’s just too difficult. Instead, you have to do these things that might look silly – but they aren’t.

The same is true for physics. You absolutely have to understand the basic physics of classical mechanics and electricity and magnetism. You can’t just jump right into quantum mechanics, it’s too complicated. If you do skip the basics, you will end up coming up with some crazy idea (although all crazy ideas aren’t actually crazy). This xkcd comic sort of explains this.

If you want to play the physics game, you have to go by the rules (at least at first).

Ok, so you get this. You know that you have to do the basics before the advance stuff. But still, is there anything you can do in high school other than paying attention in class? Yes. Here are some ideas. I am going to start with the basics and move to more advanced suggestions.

• How about an ebook? I hear this Just Enough Physics book is pretty good (and cheap). Yes, this is my ebook.


• I think the Matter and Interactions textbook is appropriate for an advanced highs chool student. This is a great place to start. It’s not free, but I highly recommend it.


• The Feynman Lectures. This is a written version of Richard Feynman’s introductory physics course. You can buy a real book version, but it is also free online. I will admit that this was too complicated for me when I was in high school.


• Take a look at Chad Orzel’s books: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (covers quantum mechanics) and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog. Both are great books. Yes, there are many other pop-culture physics books but I know these are good.


• Read some blogs. Here are some to start you off: Cosmic Variance, Starts With a Bang, Uncertain Principles, Emprical Zeal, Cocktail Party Physics. That should be enough to get you started, but there are plenty more.

Ok, I have one more suggestion: start a blog. Yes – YOU write stuff for a blog. You might think a blog is all about telling people stuff. This is only partly true. A blog is really about writing. When you write a blog post, you learn something. I know that doesn’t seem to make sense, but trust me. If you keep up a blog, you will learn things.

How do you start a blog? It’s really simple (and free)! You can go to wordpress.com or blogger.com and set up a free blog. There are other sites as well, but I have used both of those. Pick a blog name and just start blogging. It’s really not difficult. Oh, maybe you prefer to make videos instead of blogging. Maybe that would work too.

What should you write about? You can blog about things you find interesting. You can try to explain ideas you learn in your own words. This will help clarify the ideas in your own head. Who knows, maybe someone else will find it useful too.

There you go. Now get started on your physics career.