<p>Plans for the future: Research and teaching, so being a professor sounds kind of ideal.
Question: Based on the descriptions below, should I get into Geophysics or Physics?
Situation: I absolutely love physics. Geophysics sounds kind of cool, though, and I'm considering it because of how the modern dynamic of physical research contrasts with the past. Reading about Feynman, Pauli, Dirac, Einstein, etc. is really inspiring, but what I've noticed is that research in the area is not what it used to be. I fear that I would not like the contemporary method of making discoveries in physics. Research seems to be pretty straightforward laboratory testing. CERN is a good example. They take a lot of data, and computers do a lot of work. They don't, however, have to sit down with paper and pencil to work the problem out. Granted, they have to be very knowledgeable about their subject to understand the data, but that kind of work doesn't appeal to me as much as physics before the 1970's does. Neil Tyson: "There isn't much room left for table-top physics." This scares me because I really want an intellectually exciting and stimulating career. Anyway, I would really like some advice from someone regarding this. I definitely wouldn't be surprised to find that I am completely wrong regarding how research is carried out in physics these days.
Geophysics, on the other hand, has one huge benefit: traveling. Is traveling to another country to collect data as awesome as it seems? I don't anything about geology (I know quire a bit about physics), but I can't help but be allured by the notion of traveling to exotic places to carry out research. Is there a lot of hypothesizing going on, or is it mostly just collecting data? Also, lastly, how difficult would it be to get on a team of planetary scientists that analyzes the surface of other planets? That would be ideal.</p>
<p>Hi, AS a physicist I don’t know anything about geophysics but I would imagine it’s a much smaller field than physics.
I’m currently finishing a PhD in physics so I’ll try to answer some of your questions. You say you’ve been reading about Dirac, Feynman etc this is theoretical particle physics. Almost everyone I know that I did my undergrad with were initially inspired to do physics by this area. This is a field that is still very much alive, I have some friends in this area. They do research in areas such as string theory (you can come to this through either maths or physics but is much closer to maths), beyond the standard model physics etc. These people don’t go near a lab at all, they basically attempt to formulate new models of particle physics, then try to make predictions based on these models. For subjects like string theory it is not yet possible to make any kind of prediction that could be tested with present technology, but for others they wait for experimentalists i.e. those at CERN to produce results with which they can test their theories. This is probably one of the most competitive areas of physics. I went to the top university in my country for physics and graduated within the top 3% of my class and didn’t go into it because I wouldn’t be clever enough to get beyond a PhD level.
So you mentioned CERN that is basically the experimental side of the work Feynman etc did. So this work basically involved trying to deal with the huge amount of data that comes through so you need to work out which electric pulses etc result from which particles, then from the collection of particles you piece together which decayed to which and how they interacted, how many interacted in they way you’re interested in and whether this number agrees with what is predicted by theory. In practice this involves knowing a lot of physics. (These particles travel very fast so they are all relativistic, you know to know the theory to know what is interesting to look for etc.) a lot of statistics (it’s not about what you measure but how well you measure it) and doing a lot of programming, (you’re dealing with millions of pieces of information every minute so nothing is done by hand). If you love traveling I don’t think you could choose a better subject you would obviously travel to Geneva but also to conferences and summer schools all over the world, it’s a very sociable field they usually choose conferences in interesting places to visit; Moscow, Florence etc. You may not go near an actual lab if you don’t want to (some mainly sit in front of computers) but some people who are working on a particular part of the experiment will spend time in the lab developing part of the detector for example.
So the thing to note is that theorists and experimentalist are two different groups of physicists and I believe this to be true in many fields (e.g. astrophysics) and the experiments as you guessed are sometimes made up of huge collaborations. You don’t always spend time in a lab even if you are an experimentalist but you will probably spend a lot of time programming.
There are still some areas of physics in which you can do table top experiments; laser physics for example, quantum computing. There are lots of other exciting, less fundamental areas of physics biophysics, condensed matter physics etc that have loads of directly applicable results.
Anyway in terms of deciding whether you want to do physics or not I think it’s far better to not look so far a head. I don’t know if you’re in HS or early college, but it’s probably too early to tell if you have the ability to go into certain areas (most students aren’t tested mathematically very much at school so it’s impossible to know how far you’ll be able to go) and what you’ll actually be interested in when you learn things in detail. I know almost no one who stuck to the same interests from the beginning to the end of their degree. It’s not enough to love the big ideas of physics (although it’s a start) when you do research you’re doing something so specific you can almost loose the big picture on a day to day basis. You have to love working stuff out, you have to love maths and logical problems. If you’re in HS I would suggest picking up a book on special relativity, and learn the theory, then do some problems in it, do you get excited by it? Do you get a rush out of being able to calculate physical quantities? If you’re in college learn some quantum field theory, or get a summer job in a research lab (become a CERN summer student even if you don’t go into particle physics it’ll be a great summer).
Another point to note is job security and the likelihood of actually getting a job. In most scientific fields it’s very very difficult to get a professorship. You have to take many temporary jobs (2-3 years), sometimes moving country to get them, there’s an enormous pressure to publish, and there’s no guarantee of a permanent position at the end. Teaching can sometimes be tiring and stressful too.
The bonus with physics is that if you decide not to pursue research you’re very employable, and there are lots of interesting jobs you can do outside of academia.</p>
<p>Thank you much for an excellent reply. That’s a lot of what I was wanting to hear. I think I should describe more about myself: I just graduated high school. I’ll be attending the University of Rochester in the fall. There is no core curriculum at the college, so I can start taking courses toward my major right away. That’s why I’m already stressing. I’ve moved a bit beyond the popular science level I think, so I feel pretty aware of what is studied in physics. That’s not quite the problem. I’m concerned with the dynamic of the job, which you covered quite well. I’ve been afraid that research in physics today is “easy” in a sense. I know the concepts are difficult, but it seems like nothing is surprising anymore. We have already developed an understanding of the results of experiments like searching for the higgs particle, so now it seems like we’re just waiting for one of our hypothesis to be verified. If that’s the case of research, then I might as well just read about it and have a high paying job. I LOVE being… Astounded by physics. Special telephoto is actually the first thing about physics that really turned me on. I had heard the concept of time dilation before, but after I developed a mathematical understanding of it, I was in love. It was a great feeling. It’s kind of funny, though, because I started out reading the book just because I liked knowing things other people didn’t, but it developed into a real passion. Since then, I’ve been reading through textbooks of astronomy and physics like I used to read fiction. I’m currently plowing through the Feynman Lectures on Physics. He can make even classical mechanics awesome. Fiction is boring now, though, and feels like a waste of time… Unfortunately, I am not naturally gifted when it comes to mathematics. I’m not bad, but I’m slow… This scares me. In my calculus class, I was definitely not the best student, and I was always last to finish tests. It’s hard to feel confident when you know you’ll be competing with mathematical geniuses.
The last thing I want to describe is my own experience research. I worked with a local professor on sdB stars. Most of what I learned was about how to run the necessary software to get photometry results. It was a great experience, but this “research” was mostly about processing information on a computer, and waiting for results. It was fun, but not career worthy. I want to do something more dynamic and abstract.</p>
<p>Wow you sound just like me before I started my undergrad degree, except you have a lot more insight into how research works from the sound of it.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say we know exactly what we’re going find. They’ll almost certainly find a Higgs particle (that’s predicted by the standard model) but there are lots of reasons that this theory alone isn’t the final answer; it doesn’t explain why there’s so much more matter than anti matter in the universe, and there’s the hierarchy problem where two supposedly separate numbers need to cancel out to lots and lots of decimal places which would be too much of a coincidence and probably points to a new symmetry (SuperSymmetry). So it’s not clear exactly what form the new discoveries will take and it will definitely be exciting when results comes out. However like you said a lot of theoretical work is done decades before the experiment is actually built, and then it’s just a case of confirming the theory and working out the details. Also since the whole thing is such a massive undertaking that usually each individual or group really only works on a small part of each discovery. (You might measure X that helps to measure Y that is important to calibrate the measurement of the Higgs mass for example).</p>
<p>There are definitely areas of physics; biophysics, condensed matter physics, laser physics where you can be part of a smaller team working independently to produce results more immediately, but these might lack the excitement for you of the more fundamental stuff.
I think if I was doing my undergrad again I’d spend more time looking into these other areas of researching and seeing if there was an area I really liked. I definitely wouldn’t go into a field of research that I didn’t enjoy on just a day to day level - any big breakthroughs are few and far between :). Also the mathematical geniuses mainly go into theoretical areas (whether it’s particle physics, astrophysics) and so you don’t necessarily have to worry about competing with them (although maybe you’ll surprise yourself once you get to college).</p>
<p>If you don’t find something you really think you’d enjoy doing in terms of research like you said you can keep up with physics as a hobby (or go into a related area like science policy/or science reporting) and earn your money doing something else. The more qualifications you get in a numerical/technical subject like physics the more employable you are so it’s win win :)</p>
<p>telephoto = relativity, by the way… An unfortunate bi-product of using a phone to type long messages. Also, I can’t thank you enough for your replies 
Of all of the ridiculous reading I’ve done regarding the life of a physicist, your contribution is probably the most valuable.
As for going into physics, I guess I’m just going to pursue it as a career for now. I keep deciding that I’m going to do something else, but I keep accidentally, impulsively doing physics… A couple days ago, I decided that I should start working on mathematical physics NOW and bought a book by Sadri Hassani called Mathematical Physics. I was super excited to get it, but I have since discovered that it is impossible to understand… The preface says that it is for advanced undergraduates and grad students :p<br>
LAST: I have a question regarding relativistic effects on elementary particles: what happens? Which effects are prominent? I can only really ‘visualize’ Lorentz Transformations on ‘massive’ objects. I don’t even know how to approach it…</p>
<p>Wow that book on physics is definitely hardcore, if you can read that now you may as well skip the undergrad :). A lot of the stuff in the book you’d only need if you were doing a theoretical physics PhD. Although it’s cool you’re already looking at that stuff!</p>
<p>The maths you need for undergrad is more like Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering: by Riley, or something similar by Boas. I think the first year of my undergrad physics degree was half physics and half maths which pretty much just covered that book.</p>
<p>Special relativity is really hard to visualize. I always thought a good example are the relativistic muons created when high energy particles from space collide with particles in the upper atmosphere. The average lifetime of a muon is short enough that in the amount of time (for an observer on earth) it takes for them to reach the earths surface all the muons would have decayed but because of time dilation in the reference frame of the muon much less time has passed, so actually you get a reasonable flux of muons reaching the earth. I haven’t explained that very well but you can look it up:</p>
<p>teachers dot web dot cern dot ch/teachers/archiv/hst2000/teaching/expt/muoncalc/lifecalc.htm</p>
<p>Good luck with your degree! If you’re doing this much reading already you’re bound to be well, I doubt you’ll have any trouble getting summer research jobs either! By the way if you want you could always take some classes from a math major building up to stuff like group theory and differential geometry. I wish I’d done that! It’s probably too advanced now but when you start learning general relativity it’s so much help!</p>
<p>You guys have renewed my passion for physics. I lost faith after this semester (got an A, but the teacher was starting to kill me). I’ve always loved solving physics problems; it gives me a sense of fulfillment that not many other things can inspire in me. </p>
<p>Thank you guys.</p>
<p>Sorry about the lack of reply. I was gone for the 4th.
AlwaysInAwe: Did I tell you that I like your name yet? Also, don’t worry: I don’t understand 95/100ths of that book. I just saw that it was mathematical physics and that it had good reviews, so I bought it 
oops… I’ll get it done some time in the next 4 years… maybe… And thanks for the description of the Muon. I’ve heard about that before from some documentary, but I didn’t really understand it until now. Wasn’t there a nobel prize related to that finding?
Moonman676: The same things seems to happen to me at least once a week…</p>