Ask a theoretical physicist turned teacher, lecturer and author

[Alex K]

You might expect that I mention the usual cosmological phenomena like dark matter or dark energy, but I think what's much more complicated is the behavior of complex and chaotic systems such as high temperature superconductivity. Noted physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin has written an entire book moaning about how fundamental physics is doomed because we don't understand complex systems. He is wrong about fundamental physics, but it is true that deriving properties of complex systems from the basic laws is very difficult. In the same vainvein, for most controversial, I'd vote for the claim that consciousness is tied to the effects of quantum physics, and that quantum physics plays an essential role in how consciousness arises in the brain. Legendary physicist Roger Penrose has been a famous advocate of that idea. He's wrong though.

Yay! So glad to hear you say that. AI researchers generally just ignore him.

Which is related to a question I was going to ask you. Do you get annoyed with woo-ists, arm chair philosophers and new agey people justifying what they want to believe by explaining it as something to do with quantum mechanics? And is it a big problem with people with absolutely no experience or knowledge of physics thinking that they know a lot about it and arguing with experts who actually do? It certainly is a common occurrence in AI but I think that's because the field is still in its infancy and has so few successes.

Yes, that's highly annoying, and Germany is chock full with medical charlatans who claim to perform or teach Quantum Healing, exploiting the good name of physics to fleece customers. My wife just published an interesting book (as reader for the publisher, not as the author) on the subject.

[Alex K]

Do you have a TA?

Nope... in high school, I just do my thing as usual, and in college my classes are small enough that I can manage alone.

[Paraselene]

You mentioned that you teach high school and college.

Is it difficult to transition from one curriculum to another?

[Alex K]

You mentioned that you teach high school and college.

Is it difficult to transition from one curriculum to another?

No, not very. One is calculus, the other is mechanics for engineers, so there is little potential for confusion. I do sometimes underestimate a bit how much I can ask of the college guys if I've taught a lot of HS.

[Paraselene]

Since you teach both high school and college, is the place where you reside considered a college town?

Or do you live in the city?

[Alex K]

Since you teach both high school and college, is the place where you reside considered a college town?  

Or do you live in the city?

I live in Heidelberg, which is a very strong research center with one of the top universities and tons of other stuff. While I have worked as a researcher at the Uni here in the past, I currently teach at a nearby engineering college.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Do you feel sometimes that some physicists aren't really interested in saying anything enlightening or relevant but are instead exploring wank-space for their own intellectual self-gratification?

[Alex K]

Do you feel sometimes that some physicists aren't really interested in saying anything enlightening or relevant but are instead exploring wank-space for their own intellectual self-gratification?

Yes, that happens. Some young people clearly went into string theory, say, because of an intellectual dick comparison. They don't really care about figuring out the universe, they care about having a badge that says: I'm smarter than you. If academia is lucky, they end up at some hedge fund or McKinsey after a while. There are some theory papers that are just enfuriatingly vague and terse such that it requires doing the research all over again to even get what they mean, and those people should be beaten with big spoons. In the public sphere, you have people like Michio Kaku who, ugh don't get me started.

But remember, and this is very important to me: physics is a huge field comprised of different experimental, applied and theoretical fields, and within theoretical physics, the majority deal with stuff such as properties of solid state objects, superconductors, crystals, statistical physics and what have you, and a minority works on fundamental stuff like particle physics, quantum fields etc. Among those theoretical physicists who deal with particle physics in the broadest sense, the majority work on calculating precision results for collider experiments and similar stuff, while the minority is busy dreaming up speculative models. Among those, many work on calculating concrete experimental predictions for their models. The remainder, the minority among the minority among a specialist subfield in one of the branches of physics, those are sadly the people the general population thinks of when they hear "physicist", because those are the guys that get popularized, that you see on TV for the most part. So when people hear "physicist", they think of some string theorist dreaming up unfalsifiable nonsense in 11 dimensions, when that is not close to what basically all physicists do.

[ignoramus]

From what I know, some extra talented physicists even change diapers and make a mean quiche! Multiskilled to the extreme!

[Alex K]

From what I know, some extra talented physicists even change diapers and make a mean quiche! Multiskilled to the extreme!

true dat.