Physics

The theories, established well or not, contain laws expressed in the form of mathematical equations, but, like all the scientific theories, or any other theories, these theories and their laws can be called into question as soon as an experiment does not return perfectly within the framework of these laws.
The effort of the physicist consists in returning the world and all its aspects observable - and thus measurable - increasingly more rational. However it is only through one thorough observation of one phenomenon that one can analyze it and try to include/understand it, seize it and, to some extent, to transcribe it.
To approach the comprehension of a phenomenon, a fact of reality, thus means to clarify the mechanisms and subjacent laws which govern it.
The starting point of physics is thus one experiment reality: physics is before a a whole applied science; physics is also an activity which carries out to an analysis theoretical experimental fact observed. mathematics are it language rational in which express in a concise and elegant way the models of the phenomena observed.
Physics has a dimension esthetics : the best theories are simplest, the role of the theorist is to arrive at a diagram where the useless one does not take place to be.

What is included/understood well, states itself simply. An adapted mathematical formalism and which expresses this form of esthetism is able to lead to forecasts, i.e. theoretical calculation can precede and checked by the experimental observation.

In this case, the theory predictive and of this fact is validated and integrates a vast corpus of knowledge, magma in which forge new concepts and new models increasingly more relevant.
Physics finds its limit and its permanent revival is born in obvious impossibility to reach a perfect state of knowledge and without fault of reality. Indeed, it phenomenon, this fact of the reality which appears with us, cannot coincide with model whose any physical theory is asserted.
history of physics is rich in bounces, revolutions. An experiment always comes to put at fault the "beliefs" which one wrongly believed as succeeded, by ignorance of this not-limit. What progresses daily in physics is a kind of resolution, of smoothness, with which is seized, with the image of a painter, the model which arises at the eyes of the artist. However, the model cannot merge with reality but right to tend there. The painter Belgian Magritte express this limit in its famous table, The treason of the images, where it represents a pipe and precise: This is not a pipe.

One will be able to also retain the idea ofAlbert Einstein on the work of the physicist: to make physics it is like emitting theories on the operation of a clock without never being able to open it.

The work of the physicist exists since always in the history of humanity since it was put in search of techniques. The wheel and the lever are the first machines that one invented: sciences and technology are closely dependent.
However, it is by the effort of rationality of the Greek thinkers and, thereafter, the improvement of mathematics, that physics could reveal its conceptual depth and its philosophical range. The principal engine of material progress, that it is for best or the worst, is not other than physics and its many extensions in all the fields of the real world.
The physical sciences are of course in relation to other sciences, in particular chemistry, science of molecules and of the chemical compounds. Chemistry and physics share many fields, such as quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and itelectromagnetism.
However, the chemical phenomena sufficiently vast and are varied so that chemistry is generally regarded as a discipline with whole share.
Science is often in conflict with the religions owing to the fact that the first does not admit a dogma and does not seek explanations to the phenomena of the Nature which it observes (because it is only of that which science occupies) that in Nature it even.

Many are the scientists who had the statute ofheretics. Science does not claim however (or more) to be the only means of reaching a useful knowledge. It recognizes the legitimacy of other means of search of knowledge and was outdistanced scientism of its beginnings.

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Research in physics

Theory and experiment

The culture of research in physics presents a notable difference with that of other sciences with regard to separation enters theory and experiment. Since XX^E century, the majority of the physicists are specialized either in theoretical physics, that is to say in experimental physics. On the other hand, almost all famous theorists in chemistry or in biology are also experimenters.

In first approach, the theorists try to develop theories which explain the existing experimental results while the experimenters conceive and carry out experiments to test the theoretical predictions.

digital simulation occupy a very important place in research in physics and this since the beginnings of data processing. It indeed allows the approximate resolution of mathematical problems which cannot be treaties analytically. Many theorists are also numericians.

Principal theories

Although physics is interested in a large variety of systems, certain theories can be attached only to physics as a whole and not to the one of its fields. Each one of these theories is supposed just, in a certain field of validity or applicability. For example, the theory of traditional mechanics (or Newtonian) accurately described the movement of an object, provided that its dimensions is much larger than those of one atom and that its speed that is to say quite lower than speed of the light and that the object is not too close to an important mass and that this one is deprived of load. The old theories as for example Newtonian mechanics are still subjects of research in particular in the study of the complex phenomena (example: theory of chaos). They constitute the base of any research in physics and very studying in physics, whatever its speciality, is supposed to acquire the bases of each one of them.

Theory	Great fields	Concepts
Newtonian mechanics	Kinematics - Laws of the movement of Newton - Analytical mechanics - Mechanics of the fluids - Mechanics of the point - Mechanics of the solid - Transformation of Galileo - Mechanics of the continuous mediums	Dimension - Space - Time - Length - Speed - Relative speed - Mass - Kinetic moment - Force - Energy - Angular momentum - Couples - Law of conservation - Harmonic oscillator - Wave - Work - Power
Electromagnetism	Electrostatics - Electricity - Magnetism-Maxwell's equations	Electric charge - Electrical current - Electric field - Magnetic field - Electromagnetic field - Electromagnetic wave
Statistical physics and Thermodynamics	Heat engine - Kinetic theory of gases	Boltzmann constant - Entropy - Free energy - Heat - Function of partition - Temperature
Quantum mechanics	Integral of way - Equation of Schrödinger - Quantum theory of the fields	Hamiltonian - Identical particles - Planck's constant - Quantum harmonic oscillator - Function of wave - Energy of item zero
Theories of relativity	Relativity galiléenne - Restricted relativity - General relativity	Principle of equivalence - Quadrivector - Reference frame - Space time - Speed of the light - Relative speed

Disciplines of physics

Research in contemporary physics is divided into various disciplines which study aspects different from the physical world.

Field	Disciplines	Principal theories	Concepts
Astrophysics	Cosmology - Planetology - Plasma physics - Astroparticules	Big-bang - Inflation - General relativity - Black matter - Cosmic rays (origin, acceleration, propagation)	Black hole - Galaxy - Gravity - Gravitational wave - Planet - - Star
Quantum physics	Atomic physics - Molecular physics - Optics - Photonic	Quantum optics	Diffraction - Electromagnetic wave - Laser - Polarization - interferences
Physics of the particles	Particle accelerator - Nuclear physics	Standard model - Theory of great unification - Theory of the cords - Theory M	Elementary interaction ( gravity - electromagnetism - weak interaction - strong interaction ) Elementary particle - Antiparticle - Spin - Spontaneous crack of symmetry
Physics of the condensed matter	Solid state physics - Science of materials - Physics of polymers - Soft matter - mesoscopic physics - Disordered systems - Networks of neurons	Supraconductivity - Wave of Bloch - Gas of fermions - Liquid of Fermi	State of the matter - ( Gas - Liquid - Solid - Condensate of Bose-Einstein - Superfluid ) - Driver - Magnetism - Car-organization - Spin - Spontaneous crack of symmetry