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:

    Jason Hafner said...

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

    DanM said...

    Griffiths or Purcell?

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

    PhDstudent said...

    Is everything harmonic oscillators, or is everything spins?

    Anonymous said...

    Reductionism or Emergence?

    Gautam Menon said...

    Molecular or coarse-grained?

    Anonymous said...

    Matlab or Python/numpy

    Prof. Sholl said...

    Are non-SI units ever OK?

    Anonymous said...

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

    Anonymous said...

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

    pcs said...

    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?;-)