I got into a debate with a friend about the meaning of physics and its purpose,
ID: 1380045 • Letter: I
Question
I got into a debate with a friend about the meaning of physics and its purpose, he is the sort who will test you and if you get it wrong it somehow gratifies his own self-reflection and self-worth. That aside, I have loved physics since I got into it when I was at school, I had a great teacher who fostered that love and helped grow my appreciation for physics and ever since I have said to myself that I would one day go do my degree in physics. At the moment I have just finished my degree in computer security and forensics, I plan to study physics part-time hopefully in the next 5 years after I settle into permanent work in the software engineering field.
Anyway the conversation started with a question from him asking what temperature water boils at and what temperature does water freeze at. For the life of me I couldn
Explanation / Answer
I suspect this question is excessive philosophical and will be closed. However, while it's still open, I'd say Physics is the construction of mathematical models to make predictions about the real world.
The term "mathematical model" sounds complicated, but a mathematical model is just a set of one or more equations, into which you can feed measurements and from which you get predictions. An example most of us will have learned at school is Newtons Laws of Motion. This is a set of three simple equations. If you feed in initial positions and velocities Newton's laws allow to to predict the behaviour of (non-relativistic) systems into the future and indeed tell you what the behaviour was in the past.
Even the most abstruse Physics like M-theory is just the construction (and interpretation) of a mathematical model, though in the case of M-theory it isn't clear yet what the mathematical model is.
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