What’s stopping us from building small nuclear reactors to power homes? Like an individual reactor or battery for every home? Or even for a car?

Hey everyone, I'm finishing up my bachelors degree in science majoring in physics and math at an Australian university. Im looking to do a masters degree and potentially a PhD down the road.

My university offers an accredited specialisation of the Master of physics in medical physics, which is a very well paying industry where I live.

My question is: After I complete this degree in medical physics, will I be able to pursue a PhD in a field other than medical physics, or will I be locked into medical physics unless I complete significant graduate training?

I'm not sure a Master of physics in any of the other specialistions can secure me employment if I choose to enter the workforce instead of pursuing a PhD.

Thanks everyone!

I have seen many videos where cliffjumpers "break the water surface tension " by trowing a rock down before they jump or have another person splash water around at the the bottom. Does that really work? Does that tiny bit of surface tension have the potential to cause injury? Or is this just a myth?

This is a dedicated thread for you to seek and provide advice concerning education and careers in physics.

If you need to make an important decision regarding your future, or want to know what your options are, please feel welcome to post a comment below.

A few years ago we held a graduate student panel, where many recently accepted grad students answered questions about the application process. That thread is here, and has a lot of great information in it.

Helpful subreddits: /r/PhysicsStudents, /r/GradSchool, /r/AskAcademia, /r/Jobs, /r/CareerGuidance

Just the title :)

My friend is a second year undergraduate in Physics, and I would like to get them a gift that will be useful for their academic life as this is what they have requested.

Is there are good recommendations for such a gift?

This thread is a dedicated thread for you to ask and answer questions about concepts in physics.

Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators. We ask that you post these in /r/AskPhysics or /r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If you find your question isn't answered here, or cannot wait for the next thread, please also try /r/AskScience and /r/AskPhysics.

Hi all,

As part of a class I'll be teaching I coded up a interactive simulations of a few standard statistical physics models --- so far I've made a page for Ising-like models and for a model of flocking, and I'll be adding new ones to this page as the course progresses.

While I primarily made these to complement my lectures, I thought I would share them in case anyone finds the ability to explore how these different models behave in different parts of parameter space helpful! They are (of course) hardly the first such web simulators to be made publicly available. If nothing else, though, perhaps you'll enjoy the ability to easily adjust the aesthetics of your Ising-model images --- share your best (or most garish) spin configurations!

Hey r/Physics,

I’ve recently developed a basic tool called ICBM Simulator, and I wanted to share it with the community. This open-source simulator lets you explore the trajectories of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) from a scientific perspective.

About the Tool:

The simulator is straightforward—it allows you to input some basic launch parameters and see how an ICBM might travel through the atmosphere and along its trajectory. While it’s not highly advanced, it’s a solid starting point for anyone interested in the basic science behind missile trajectories.

What You Can Do:

• Basic Trajectory Simulation: Visualize the missile’s flight path based on simple input parameters.
• Impact Estimation: Get a rough idea of where the missile might land based on the trajectory.
• Educational Purpose: This tool is purely for scientific curiosity and learning about missile trajectories.

Why I Made It:

I created this simulator to help people understand the fundamentals of missile trajectories without getting too technical. Whether you’re a student, educator, or just curious about how these things work, I hope you find it interesting.

Open Source & Feedback Welcome:

The project is fully open source, so anyone interested in contributing, exploring, or modifying it is welcome to do so. Check out the source code on GitHub: ICBM Simulator on GitHub. I’m still working on improvements, so I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions! If you have ideas for making it more useful or educational, please let me know.

Check it out at icbmsimulator.com and let me know what you think.

I have a classmate at the university who has played over several thousands hours of Hearts of Iron (i don't know which one). It seems like his HoI experience alone had a huge impact on his knowledge of history and geography. I'm under the impression that he knows literally anything about the governments, small and big, that existed at a time period of WWII - their rulers, various minor representatives of the government, goals, ideologies, possible alternative fates of these countries, had they made certain decisions at that time period.

He also played a lot of God of War and is quite well versed in Scandinavian mythology. Of course his sources of knowledge are not limited to just games. But it makes me wonder, are there any games that would have similair impact on my understanding of physics? That would have been lovely. Just imagine the amount of stuff one can learn through HoI alone.

If you had any such experience, please share with me. And not just games, any other entertaining way of boosting my knowledge by doing something besides educating myself directly via books, videos and the university itself (i study theoretical physics).

However, I would ask you to exclude shallow or popular science from your suggestions, like big bang theory or something.

This is a thread dedicated to collating and collecting all of the great recommendations for textbooks, online lecture series, documentaries and other resources that are frequently made/requested on /r/Physics.

If you're in need of something to supplement your understanding, please feel welcome to ask in the comments.

Similarly, if you know of some amazing resource you would like to share, you're welcome to post it in the comments.

Hi r/Physics,

I wasn't sure if I should use the weekly post for this, so I'm going to try and make a post.

I'm currently in my 3rd year of a PhD, and I just can't get over the feeling that I just don't have the aptitude for physics as a career. Sure, I can do the classes, and I can pass the exams, but doing research seems like a completely different task. I have an advisor who's pretty nice and supportive, and the field I'm working in is interesting enough, but despite this, I feel that I am unable to climb the mountain of literature I need to read, and even if I was able, I wouldn't have the insight I need to make any kind of meaningful contribution to my field.

I suppose that my feelings are pretty well summarized by imposter syndrome, which I know pretty much every graduate student struggles with. But I can't shake the feeling that what I'm feeling is unique, and a symptom of something bigger.

For those of you who are father along the academic path, does this feeling ever go away? Is the solution to keep reading and keep working until you truly feel like you're the expert you're supposed to be, or do I need to learn to make my peace with how I'm feeling?

This is a dedicated thread for you to seek and provide advice concerning education and careers in physics.

If you need to make an important decision regarding your future, or want to know what your options are, please feel welcome to post a comment below.

A few years ago we held a graduate student panel, where many recently accepted grad students answered questions about the application process. That thread is here, and has a lot of great information in it.

Helpful subreddits: /r/PhysicsStudents, /r/GradSchool, /r/AskAcademia, /r/Jobs, /r/CareerGuidance

This thread is a dedicated thread for you to ask and answer questions about concepts in physics.

Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators. We ask that you post these in /r/AskPhysics or /r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If you find your question isn't answered here, or cannot wait for the next thread, please also try /r/AskScience and /r/AskPhysics.

Hi, I'm a student from India. I recently started looking more into the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation, and so I decided to make a solver for it!

You can check it out here: https://avirald.me/brans-dicke-calculator/
I used pyodide to make a python script execute in GitHub pages

Let me know what you think!

PS: I'm working on speeding it up, it's somewhat slow right now.

I recently received the following email:

"Exciting news! Your paper, [redacted], has just received its first community-generated summary on arXiv++.

Take action now: Your expertise is crucial!

As the author, you can:

Check if there are any missing or incorrect elements in the summary If there are comments, answer them to provide clarity or additional insights To review and contribute, simply visit your paper's arXiv page using our browser extension. You can find installation instructions on our website: How to install."

The email obviously looks like a scam meant to install some kind of bitcoin miner or similar on my machine, but I was surprised that Google's Spam filter didn't pick it up. There's also always the possibility that it's real.

Has anyone received something similar?

Thanks