As humans, we are a curious lot. Is this too wide an assumption? Specifically, there are days that come around when this writer wonders about how there is anything at all – days through which being content with observing events as detached and incomprehensible prove difficult. Consequently, I am left alone to stare at a playful desire for understanding the unseen order in the world. This craving has been with a good number of human beings since antiquity, now that it remains an unhindered enterprise: The search continues for a complete unified theory of laws that govern our universe. If one will ever be found, the writer cannot say. However, what is remarkable is that with each newer and more-complete understanding of physical reality the human’s interaction with its surroundings is redefined. Consider the Industrial Revolution. Computers, the specks of light in the night sky, sky-scrapers, and the recent advances in invisibility cloaks (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/8025886.stm) – If you have ever had the urge to invent, to conceptually understand the inner workings of phenomena you observe daily, or to comprehend the meaning of your place within this world, then you have contemplated on things that many respected physicists have and still do!

     Then, what is this physics exactly? Physics is originally a Greek word that roughly translates into “the science of change”. Broadly speaking, a physicist seeks to analyze (and through such analysis, understand) the natural world and the relationships that therein occur. In a very important sense it creates a view of the world we inhabit by asking, and investigating through, basic questions: The fundamental science of physics involves the study of matter and energy, and the various interactions between them. Simplistically speaking, everything around you and me is made up of matter; and contained in this matter is energy. This energy gives matter the capacity to do work: to be transformed from one state to another, to move from one point to the next, and so forth – essentially, matter and energy interact to manifest the natural world and the observable occurrences therein. So it follows, for instance, that a physicist will tell you that in burning firewood to prepare a meal, chemical energy (contained in the bonds that give wood its identifiable structure) is converted into the thermal energy that cooks the food and makes the cook feel heat. Wood is transformed into charcoal and gas, a different and irreversible state of wood. The water is absorbed by the food and also transformed into vapor (a different but reversible state of water). As can be seen from this example, the scope of physics covers a very broad region; from the smallest subatomic particles through clusters of galaxies to the origin of existence. Most professional physicists have to limit their attention to one or two fields of the discipline: A physicist's work typically involves experimental investigations and theoretical analysis, though some choose to specialize in only one of these.


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