[ExI] Discontent with the path physics is taking

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Brent Neal <brentn at freeshell.org> wrote:
>
> On 17 Aug, 2011, at 13:24, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>> 2011/8/17 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
>> I am not a theoretical physicist, so these are the opinions of a
>> poorly informed amateur... but I am interested from that perspective.
>
> OK, so I -am- a theoretical physicist, although one who has been doing experimental physics for his day job for the past few years. But, given that, let me weigh in with my view.
>
> If one believes that string theory, QCD, and all the weird, wild mathematics behind gauge theories
> and many-body theory are the sum total of theoretical physics, I weep for your ignorance. :)

I weep for my ignorance too... but I can only take physics to the
point that the mass media is willing to go... I'm not going to brush
up on my very rusty mathematics and go back to grad school at this
point :-)

>There are areas of theoretical physics that are being studied now that weren't even an option for me to study when I started in grad school over a decade ago. Soft matter physics immediately comes to mind, since that's the area I'm working in now. It wasn't even considered "real physics" until de Gennes got a Nobel for it, but now the Soft Matter and Polymer Physics section of APS is one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing section.  These areas are very highly studied and funded (even the theoretical folks) - but, of course, in anti-intellectual America, not funded nearly well enough. There are other areas, including biophysics, where the rigorous discipline and mathematical formalisms that are characteristic of physics have been applied to problems that were formerly only studied by chemists, biologists, and scientists from other disciplines. The breakdown of that ivory tower wall is something I believe has been good for physics as a field of study and good for scientific endeavor in general.
>

So Brent, why do you think the mass media never even talks about this
stuff? Don't us Monday morning physicists deserve to hear about this
cool stuff too? :-)  Is it just too hard to grok the basic concepts?
I've never even heard the phrases "Soft Matter" or "Polymer Physics".

I am glad to hear that there is a lot of good work going on, and I
suspected that there was. We of the great unwashed masses just don't
hear about it.

-Kelly