• Question: What made you want to become a physicist? What do you find interesting about physics?

    Asked by bexxxxxie393 to Joel, Kristian, Tim, Venus, Zachary on 12 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Kristian Harder

      Kristian Harder answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      I remember that the first year we had physics in school (5th grade), I didn’t actually find it interesting at all. The next year we had a different teacher, and he really did a good job (for me, not for everyone 🙂 ) to convey his fascination for how the universe works according to a simple set of rules. I think that’s what got me. It was actually two physics teachers who I remember for putting me on course. That one guy who was seeing things quite from a mathematical side, and later a teacher who was very excited about advanced physics and told us a lot about things not actually in the school curriculum, such as theory of relativity, astrophysics and so on. (The second guy looked a lot like Einstein, even the hair-do, but it wasn’t Einstein himself – I am not *that* old. 🙂 )
      So, yeah, it was in school that I got curious about how the universe works. And with that in mind, particle physics was the obvious subject to go for, because it deals with the universe at the most fundamental level. (In the same way, you need philosophy to deal with what you find – theory of science, logic, theory of truth and such things, mostly called analytical philosophy), and so I spent some time on that as well when going to University, but my emphasis always was on actually doing the experiments. 🙂

    • Photo: Tim Hollowood

      Tim Hollowood answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      I just wanted to understand how things were like they were and I never got a good answer. So now somone pays me to try to answer that question about the universe. I think it’s so inspiring that we understand so much about how the universe works that we can now make devices that a few years ago would have seemed like magic, like a mobile phone. That’s all physics (also particle physicists invented the world wide web).

    • Photo: Joel Goldstein

      Joel Goldstein answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      I’ve always taken things apart to see how they worked – old radios, tape recorders, doors and now protons!

    • Photo: Zachary Williamson

      Zachary Williamson answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      What made me want to become a physicist…

      There wasn’t really any one defining moment. I was always interested in science even at a very young age, and as I grew I kept learning more and more about physics, with my fascination growing as I kept discovering answers about how the universe worked. By the time I was 16 or so I was completely set on a career in science, it just felt right. 9 years later, I have to say that I was on the money with that feeling, I love science and I’m really happy to be in a position where I can make a living out of it.

      As for what I find interesting about physics…everything! It literally describes the way our universe behaves. Or at least tries to…

      What I really like about physics is the way it’s developed over hundreds of years. I like the way it continually builds upon previous discoveries; it’s like weaving a great tapestry of human knowledge thread by thread…

Comments