Are you smart enough to study physics?
It's a fair enough question and sometimes
people ask me this question to get my opinion
on their situation.They might say something
like 'Oh i've got good grades in these math
and physics courses that i've taken at school
so far, do you think I would be able to handle
doing an undergraduate degree in physics?
Am I smart enough to do that?'
And the answer to that is probably yes.
If you've already done well in whatever math/science/physics
courses you've taken so far, you probably
do have what it takes to keep going in that
field and to do some tertiary studies in physics.
But I think the real question here or what
you should be thinking about is not deciding
that you are smart enough to do physics but
instead deciding that you are going to be
smart enough.
Physics is definitely not easy for anyone
no matter how smart they think they are and
it is going to take a lot of self-motivation
and self-discipline.
And it's going to take you deciding that you
are willing to put in the work and everything
it takes to excel at physics.
You are also going to need to do away with
any sort of romantic ideas that you might
have about what it's like to be a physicist.
And people sometimes get these ideas through
physics and the way it is portrayed in like
documentaries or on TV.
Often physics is portrayed in a way that makes
it feel very romantic.
That it's sort of like this fantasy where
you dont need to understand all of the mathematical
underpinnings of an idea to be able to make
advances and that it's just a matter of thinking
up all these pseudo-religious thoughts about
physics and what you believe is true about
the universe.
The way that physics is portrayed like that,
I don't think it's a good representation of
what physics is really like, to work as a
physicist or to be in academia at all.
Also the way that physics is portrayed in
the media makes you feel like you need to
be a genius to get very far in it.
That you need to have this sort of crazy scientist
or einstein or sheldon cooper type qualities
about you to be a physicist.
But I think that is also not a very good representation
of what it's really like.
The idea of IQ being a measure of whether
you are smart enough to study physics I think
is not very good, I think taking this raw
intelligence quotient is not very useful to
telling you if you have the skills that it
takes to be good at physics.
There is definitely very small people who
excel in other fields who are not good at
physics and likewise people who are really
good at physics who are not necessarily as
good at other fields.
So I think instead of getting caught up on
if your IQ is high enough and you have this
sort of raw intelligence measure, you should
be thinking 'is this field a good fit for
my intelligence?'.
So i definitely think people have different
strengths, some people won't be good at physics
because it just doesn't fit with the strengths
that they have.
So i'm going to now show you a few practical
things you can do, basically google searches
you can do and things you can look at to find
out if physics is something that suits well
with your strengths.
So all i've done so far is to go to google
and to type in the phrase 'MIT physics syllabus'.
Now i've chosen MIT as my example uni here
but you could replace that with literally
any uni that you're interested in, maybe one
that you're planning to go to.
Essentially we're just seeking out a physics
syllabus from an undergraduate physics course.
MIT is a good example because a lot of their
stuff is open courseware and their website
it pretty good.
So that search has led me to the MIT department
of physics website.
Now most university physics departments will
have their own website with something similar
to this on it.
This is information for prospective physics
majors.
It talks a little bit about what you would
be learning and it then talks about the exact
courses you would be taking.
It gives some of their course codes as well.
The information we are getting out of this
is the core subjects involved and what the
course codes are called.
From this page I was able to click on to information
about undergraduate courses and I get to a
page like this one here.
Now this is also somewhat common for any university's
page.
It is a list of the courses you can take,
this is all the physics subjects.
I could sort this my graduate or by undergraduate.
These are all the courses that you could be
taking and it has information about each of
them including the textbooks which are involved.
So if we go down this list if we just wanna
click on something like classical mechanics
we will be taken to here and we get told some
of the actual ideas that are involved in all
of these courses.
There is also a little link here to textbooks
and it says here that for this classical mechanics
course the textbook is landau and lifshitz
and that's the required one and you can go
and seek this textbook out yourself and have
a read of it and actually know what you would
be learning in this course and maybe you can
try some of the practice examples from the
textbook and they're likely to be very similar
to whatever the exam questions or assignment
questions are if you were taking this course.
It says here that you could buy this textbook
yourself, I would recommend that as maybe
a last resort, probably if you are at a uni
or have access to a uni library you don't
need to be a student to go to a uni library
anyone can just go in and read the textbooks
there without checking them out, i would probably
try to do that.
Try to just get a bit of a read of this before
you invest the money into buying it, there
are some less than legal ways to get them
online but i'm not going to talk about that
too much [lib-gen].
But I think this could be useful for you if
you really want to know what's involved in
the physics course before you sign up.
Here is a list of all those courses and there's
a list of all the textbooks, this is also
a great way to teach yourself physics.
If you can't afford to go to uni or its not
possible for you, you can learn a lot of the
same things just by looking at what these
MIT classes are actually going to be doing.
So like I said you can do that for pretty
much any uni that has a good and functional
website and puts that sort of stuff online.
Then I did the same thing for Cambridge because
that's another famous uni, many people would
be interested in knowing what they do at cambridge
and so I just googled something like Cambridge
Department of Mathematics and Physics and
once I was on that department page it was
pretty easy to just click around and find
some course information.
So this page is about the undergraduate mathematics
course, the mathematical tripos lasts 3-4
years.
Then its talking a bit about what is involved
and there is a link to courses.
After following that link for a little bit
i ended up with this document here and this
is about each of the courses that's involved
in this mathematical tripos.
There is a lot of intro stuff about what is
going on in the course but then we get into
the juice a little bit down here and they
go through each of the courses so maybe even
it's just each of the subject areas like numbers
and sets, differential equations, probability,
and they go through and are saying these are
the specific learning outcomes, these are
what you are going to learn in the course
and again they have some appropriate textbooks.
So again I would say if you really want to
know if you are good enough to do this stuff
check out some of those textbooks, try a few
of the problems after reading a bit of the
sections and if that's doable for you then
you are probably more than good enough to
enrol in the course for real.
In fact this might give you a good head start.
I'm going to put all of these links in the
description so you can check out these exact
documents or you can try to find your own
just with a bit of googling.
Another thing you can do is if you get course
codes which I was showing you on one of the
previous pages, they are like the 8.03 or
whatever it is, the number that represents
the course, you can then google that course
code.
maybe type it in and type like assignments
or exams or something and you might be able
to find a bit more about that course from
like maybe it has it's own separate webpage.
That's something I would probably try as well
if you are really curious to see what people
are learning in that course.
Not everything is going to be open to you
but some unis definitely put more stuff online
than others.
MIT I said is a good example of having a lot
of open courseware that you can have a look
at.
It is the same thing with exams, just from
this university of cambridge page you can
go to past exam papers and then there is a
bunch of pdf documents here i'll jsut click
on a random one and then you can take a look
at this exam here.
Sometimes this is what I just do in my videos
I just google Physics exam on some particular
topic and I just show you guys what is one
of the first google results.
Sometimes you send me messages like thank
you so much for showing me what an astrophysics
exam is like I have always wanted to know,
but you could just google it yourself.
I enjoy showing you guys and giving my commentary
but there is a lot of stuff that you can just
do a bit of research into on your own.
I guess because i've been through the whole
uni system I'm aware of what's out there but
I know that if you are at high school or haven't
been through this uni system you might not
know that this sort of stuff actually exists
online.
Hopefully that does help you make a decision
about whether physics is something that is
suited to your intelligence and to your strengths
but if you are spending so much time worrying
about if you're smart enough to study physics
that's probably not the right mindset to have
and maybe if you are so concerned, maybe it
isn't the right thing for you.
I know from my experience I sort of just dove
into it with that decision that it was just
going to work, I was just going to have to
be smart enough and i didn't try to worry
about anything really too much except just
focusing on my courses and learning the stuff
that was involved.
Best wishes from me for anything that you
do decide to follow and thanks for watching.
