Saturday, January 09, 2021

Questions that show who you are as a physicist

There are some cool new physics and nanoscience results out there, but after a frankly absurd week (in which lunatics stormed the US Capitol, the US reached 4000 covid deaths per day, and everything else), we need something light.  Stephen Colbert has started a new segment on his show called "The Colbert Questionert" (see an example here with Tom Hanks - sorry if that's region-coded to the US), in which he asks a list of fifteen questions that (jokingly) reveal the answerer's core as a human being.   These range from "What is your favorite sandwich?" to "What do you think happens when you die?".  Listening to this, I think we need some discipline-specific questions for physicists.  Here are some initial thoughts, and I'd be happy to get more suggestions in the comments.  

  • Food that you eat when traveling to a conference or talk but not at home?
    • Science fiction - yes or no?
    • What is your second-favorite subdiscipline of physics/astronomy/science?
    • Favorite graph:  linear-linear? Log-log?  Log-linear?  Double-log?  Polar?  Weird uninterpretable 3D representation that would make Edward Tufte's head explode?
    • Lagrangian or Hamiltonian?
    • Bayesian or frequentist?
    • Preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics/solution to the measurement problem?

    10 comments:

    1. If your lab were only allowed to use the items from a single catalog, what catalog would it be?

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    2. Griffiths or Purcell?

      (p.s. the story about Captain Kangaroo having served in the marines on Iwo Jima is urban legend, not fact. Sorry.)

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    3. Is everything harmonic oscillators, or is everything spins?

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    4. Anonymous3:46 PM

      Reductionism or Emergence?

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    5. Molecular or coarse-grained?

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    6. Anonymous12:25 PM

      Matlab or Python/numpy

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    7. Are non-SI units ever OK?

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    8. Anonymous12:48 PM

      SRS lock-in amplifiers vs Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifiers?

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    9. Anonymous12:48 PM

      Keithley vs HP/Agilent/Keysight for current/voltage meters?

      ReplyDelete
    10. Chinese, SF yes, glasses, linear, Hamiltonian, frequentist, Copenhagen, MDC, Griffiths, oscillators, emergence, molecular, Matlab, SI, SRS, Keithley.

      So, what's the verdict, other than me being inconsistent?;-)

      ReplyDelete