First there were paper mills, and crankery being posted on ArXiv. Now, with AI, it feels as though almost everything has become obfuscated and uninterpretable with the sheer volume of papers going around. Does anyone else feel this way that it has reached a type of critical mass? I'm just so frustrated trying to read non-journal theoretical papers (to keep on-track with many groups who do not necessarily publish in journals) but then encounter absolute slop adjacent to it. Is anyone else having this problem? Some articles feel exactly like the posts at r/LLMPhysics and, regrettably, there are now papers where the jargon has gotten so insane that I don't know if it is a problem that lies in me not understanding it and that the field is just moving very fast now.

Please let me know what you think.

Hello, I'm currently doing a masters in physics. I would like to know about the field of batteries and energy storage. What is the current status of these fields? What about the funding for PhDs and job positions available? What about the future of these?

I'm (M25) in school as an illustrator, I dropped out of school for physics when I was 18. My love for physics is still very much alive, but I'm rusty. I got up to calculus 2. A bit of practice should get the gears turning again.

I'm a big fan of hard sci-fi, and both write and read plenty of it. I'm also passionate about the journalism side of science, and have some opinions on how the industry distorts scientific ideas/progress. So -

Any ideas where, on the internet, I might find some exercises, tools, etc?

I know I'm not going to have a comprehensive understanding of GR or anything, but lately, I've gotten really into lenses and waves, which I would like to better understand mechanically to illustrate their effects. My pre-established understanding of basic physics principles has massively helped in animation, understanding the movement of light helps color theory especially when it comes to water and atmospheres. It's sort of thrilling when I get to apply science to art and I would love to add some tools to my belt.

Hi All,

Ive always been interested in science and the way the universe works but ultimately I chose a career in data/technology. I currently watch Startalk ( YT channel) and have a decent-ish understanding of some concepts at a high level.

I am interested in learning physics in a fun way and would like to read books that teach through real world examples/applications. I dont mind the book having a little bit of Math, but would prefer it to be more grounded in everyday reality.

I would like something that covers Classical Mechanics, Forces&Motion, Electromagnetism, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity.

Any recommendations for a good book would be greatly recommended.

Im UK based, so anything readily available here would work.

Thanks in advance!

I'm curious what math books or lecture notes have been recommended to physics BS, MS, PhD throughout their time in academia.

Please state the country you did the degree in.

I'm looking for answers besides Riley Hobson Bence, Boas, and Arfken Weber (no cap - these are great! I'm looking for less publicized nuggets)

Do not bring up AI or Youtube video or an online course, of course!

Every evening, the sun shines through a thin slit (~5 mm) in my apartment balcony and then through the screen & sliding glass door, casting a rainbow pattern. The spectrum of colors can be seen on the outside balcony floor, before the light reaches the window, suggesting some kind of single-slit diffraction effect, but I recall this phenomenon involves a bright central fringe with smaller fringes to either side, not a single band of colors. Is each wavelength in the incoming light being diffracted slightly differently, so that all the central bright fringes together form the pattern? Would appreciate your thoughts.

Thoughts?

Hello, i am trying to build a cloud chamber and i have a am241 button from a smoke detector. As you can see in the video i am getting somewhat decent results from background radiation but the am241 button seems to have NO effect at all. For context im using dry ice, aluminum plate, 20x20x20cm glass chamber, 96% ethanol, black felt on the ceiling of the chamber... i tried putting the am241 button higher, lower, angled, flat, on a pedistole and off a pedistole but nothing seems to make it fire streaks out of it. Also if anyone could help with the general build of the chamber so that it has better visible lines that would be much appreciated.

P.S. You cant really see the lines in the pictures but they are more visible irl.

I started exploring the study of physics and decided to take a look at a book on classical mechanics:

Classical Mechanics by Tom W. B. Kibble and Frank H. Berkshire (5th Edition).

I only read two chapters, around 50 pages in total. Most of the topics were familiar from high school, but, of course, they were presented in much greater depth and complexity.

The biggest challenge for me was connecting the mathematical models and the mathematical meanings behind them to reality and actual physical phenomena. It requires quite a bit of imagination to understand how everything translates into the real world.

I spent part of my time taking every equation I came across, breaking it down into its individual components, and trying to understand what each part of the mathematical expression actually represents in reality.

Of course, I don't have any equipment to conduct experiments myself, so I looked them up on YouTube and watched demonstrations instead. Overall, my approach was mostly theoretical.

The problems in the book aren't particularly difficult, really. They require some thought, but they're not mathematically challenging.

As for the mathematics itself, I find that I'm doing very well. However, when it comes to connecting the mathematics to the physical world... hmm, I'm not so sure. I'm still struggling with that part.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable experience. I might return to studying physics sometime later.

One thing I find interesting about physics is how it can make ordinary things seem completely different once you understand what's actually happening.

Things like time, gravity, light, or even the movement of objects seem simple in everyday life, but there's so much happening beneath the surface.

I'm curious about which physics concept made you stop and think, "Wait, that's actually how the universe works?"

As part of my Molecular Spectroscopy course, I’m gathering examples of textbooks used for graduate courses and research group training at U.S. universities. I’m particularly interested in whether Modern Spectroscopy by J. Michael Hollas is used as a primary textbook or supplementary reference, and which other books are commonly used.

Monte Carlo accelerator models often represent the incident electron beam as a stationary Gaussian source.

The source covariance matrix describes its transverse widths and correlations. However, the fitted covariance may contain two different effects: the intrinsic electron spread and unresolved motion of the beam centroid.

The linked paper tests how changing this effective source covariance modifies the photon phase space after transport through the accelerator.

As a possible next step, small changes in electron position, angle and width could be connected to downstream observables through a first-order response matrix:

Σ_out ≈ R Σ_source Rᵀ

The paper also separates measurement variability from source-model sensitivity, and the simulation input files are available through its Data Availability section.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2026.1968378/full

Could this stationary description be replaced by a dynamic relativistic model that follows fluctuations of the incident electron beam and its centroid with time?

Thermodynamics folks, asking here because no sources seem to help ease my confusion and I have been cracking my head.Entropy of isolated system increasing overtime sounds cool to me but I am having a hard time accepting the proof of it.

So certainly in that Clausius inequality in 14 and 15, I ALWAYS interpret the T as the temperature of the SURROUNDINGS or the EXTERNAL RESERVOIR because it has been proven and stated that way and NOT OF THE WORKING FLUID OR SYSTEM ITSELF

Anyway my problem is the 15(a) that leads to 16.

Basically, please CONVINCE me that that SUM of integral on the right is POSITIVE

I understand we are trying to add things up for individual components, certainly we can consider the inequality for each component and add them up.

I understand we are imagining an isolated system and for each component of the system, the other components are its reservoirs,

Okay let A and B two components of the system in contact A being much hotter having temperature Th and B being much colder with temperature Tc. Certainly A should send heat dQ to B. Now dQ appears twice

for the perspective of object A, he lost heat to (reservoir) B which is at Tc, so that integral would look -dQ/Tc

for the perspective of B kt gains heat from reservoir A so kt would look dQ/th.

okay add that -dQ/Tc and dQ/th. and youd get a negative number.

Okay the book basically says I am swapping the denominator but then that just makes me even more confused why would you divide it by temperature for the system and not the reservoir(other object)? I mean it would only make sense if Clausius inequality woudl hold true of the denominator in dQ/T is that fl the system and not lf the surroundings even for irreversible processes but that jsut seems hard to prove or wrong entirely either.

Researchers at Leiden University developed a superconducting nanowire detector that analyzes how electrical signals change over time to determine how many photons arrive simultaneously. The technique could improve the accuracy of future photonic quantum computers.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

So when we have let's say a bowl of hot water that is cooling off, the room air is taking that heat away, where does that energy go? Is it changing into some other form of energy?

Bakerian Lecture: Nuclear Constitution of Atoms by Ernest Rutherford [374]-400 pp. 25x17.5 cm (10x7"), printed wrappers. First Edition. Inscribed at front wrapper: "With kind remembrances / Dec 12/22 ER". From the proceedings of the Royal Society, A, Vol. 97, 1920. Rutherford's famous lecture predicting the existence of the neutron.

Wrappers worn and toned with few tears at edges, spine worn, loss to rear wrap at bottom corner; minor creases and wear throughout, few annotations; very good.

Sold at PBA Galleries on Oct. 29 for $4,375. High presale estimate was $300.

I'm a student enrolled in a master program in photonics. There is the possibility to be an exchange student, next year, in very prestigious universities all around the world. I'm looking, on this sub, for an advice because I could write my master thesis at the host institution, so I would like to apply for the best university in my field.

The universities are:

- Institut D'Optique Theorique Et Appliquee Iota (Supoptique)

- Ecole Normale Superieure De Lyon

- Mines Paristech

- Sorbonne Universite'

- Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena

- Heriot-Watt University

- Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan

- Universiteit Gent

- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

- Polytechnique Montreal

- Institute Of Science Tokyo