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| Dilbertdotcom |
The problem is that most of the popular physics that the public enjoys constitutes perhaps 10% of the research that physicists worldwide are engaged in. Again, count the number of physics books in your local bookstore, and you will notice that about 90% of them cover quantum mechanics, cosmology, particle physics and "theories of everything". You would be hard-pressed to find volumes on condensed matter physics, biophysics, the physics of "soft" matter like liquids and non-linear dynamics. And yes, these are bonafide fields of physics that have engaged physics's best minds for decades and which are as exciting as any other field of science. Yet if you ask physics-friendly laymen what cutting-edge physics is about, the answers will typically span the Big Bang, Higgs boson, black holes, dark matter, string theory and even time-travel. There will be scant mention if any of say spectroscopy, optics, polymers, magnetic resonance, lasers or even superconductivity.
Tweedle Dum: If you think we're waxworks, you ought to pay, you know.
Tweedle Dee: Contrariwise, if you think we're alive you ought to speak to us.
Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee:That's logic.
The Curious Wavefunction: Physics's PR Problem
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