ight that we can’t see! But that is communicating! The fabric of our civilization is now stitched together with that communication. If you want to buy something, need medical help, or want to learn something today, you are absolutely reliant on signals being sent to you by electromagnetic waves. We take this web of communication for granted. But we should really appreciate it as a luxury.
In both the U.K. and the U.S., there is a steady decline of high school students opting for physics, particularly among girls. What can be done to make the subject more attractive?
When people hear the word physics, they think quantum weirdness or cosmology, something extremely tiny or very big. What we’re not talking about is all the stuff in the middle. The equations for Newton’s Laws of Motion can be written down quite easily. But those simple laws can help us understand the way our human systems and bodies work, and you can see their effects in the real world. That is a very important reason to study physics.
Physics has this image of being terribly po-faced: a guy with a beard working late at night in a dark room. There’s nothing human in that view of physics. But physics is about making things happen, and we’re not doing well enough at conveying the message that once you understand the framework of the world, you have a different perspective. Even if you’re not going to become a physicist, that is a useful thing for a citizen to have.
Physics is also about how things work. During your lifetime you’re going to be sold toasters or washing machines or cars, and you need to know which questions to ask. Physics is about giving you the basic map of the world.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.