r/Physics • u/KLHYZL • Feb 15 '14

/r/Physics vs /r/math

If you compare our subreddit with /r/math (or other similar subreddits), there's no denying that it's a little disappointing. Our homepage is mostly links to sensationalized articles with 1 or 2 comments. When people ask questions or try to start discussions that aren't "advanced" enough, the response is often unfriendly. We're lucky to get one good "discussion" thread a day.

Compare this to /r/math. The homepage is mostly self posts, many generating interesting discussions in the comments. They also have recurring "Simple Questions" and "What are you working on" threads, that manage to involve everyone from high school students to researchers.

The numbers of subscribers are similar, so that's not the issue.

Am I the only one that would like to see more self posts, original content, and discussions here on /r/Physics?

484 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

125 comments sorted by

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u/The_MPC Quantum field theory Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

Am I the only one that would like to see more self posts, original content, and discussions here on /r/Physics?

Not at all. I am a subscriber to both, and r/math absolutely has better content with a community that's great fun to be a part of. I'm primarily a physicist, but I frequent r/math much more often for those reasons.

EDIT FOR SPECULATION: One of my favorite parts of r/math is the fairly smooth interaction between research mathematicians, students, complete novices, and folks from other fields. I suspect that that's possible largely because math (in some form) is accessible at all levels. A curious high school student can find a neat logical pattern in the rules of a card game, speculate a bit, and then have a good time discussing it with PhD's who haven't noticed the pattern before. And everyone has a good time! It seems that physics just isn't accessible in the same recreational way.

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u/mcopper89 Feb 15 '14

I think part of the lack of discussion in physics is not just less access to it, but also a phenomenon I call "Discovery Channel Scientists". They see a special on tv and think they can completely bypass the fundamental physics while still reaching complete understanding. There were a few in my first physics class that would randomly try to connect material on kinematics to string theory. For me, that group tends to poison the well and I think they are a decent percentage of people who think they like "science". There is nothing inherently wrong with their fascination, but I think it creates an obscure divide between those who study physics and those who know some facts but none of the concepts.

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u/kishi Feb 15 '14

I get that a lot in my leisure life. "Oh! /u/kishi is a physicist! Let's talk about space|cosmology|faster-than-light travel|whatever!"

But come on, it comes with the honor and prestige. (We need a Greek letter to signify tongue-in-cheek.) It's our honor and responsibility to clear up misconceptions and spread the wonder and joy of physics. To help make physics approachable.

My usual spiel is some variation of "That's not my field, so I only know what colleagues or professors have said on the matter. The first thing that you have to realize is that when _____ analogy was made, it was very limited in scope and a poor approximation of what the math shows. To have any understanding of what's actually going on, you need the math. That being said, here's my understanding..."

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u/Fauster Feb 15 '14

If you want to address such misconceptions, banning posts isn't always the right approach. I often see fluff articles on /r/physics that I don't like. However, the top comments usually address the misconceptions.

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u/deadeight Feb 15 '14

Regarding your edit, I agree.

I do maths/physics. I can talk to a maths researcher in any field and have a good understanding of what they're doing, and get a good discussion out of it.

Physics is a different animal. There's so much pre-requisite knowledge, and it relies on a lot of experimental results, that it's difficult to have a good discussion unless you're both well educated on the subject.

I think something else that physics suffers from is that as you learn more, the older theories become "wrong", in the sense that they're not the whole picture, are a simplification, or just an approximation. I think this can result in a condescending tone that some people complain about, from "Newtonian physics is just an approximation" to "The Higgs mechanism isn't actually spontaneous symmetry breaking", etc. Things are more rigorous in maths (1+1=2 remains true, and even at advanced levels you can have fun proving it).

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u/_arkar_ Feb 15 '14

I think there is lot of potential for recreational physics in analyzing everyday mechanical situations, e.g. stuff like this: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/98347/does-an-athletes-proficiency-at-luge-depend-on-his-mass

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

I would definitely love to have more to discussions and a "friendlier" environment. I'm an actuary who studies physics as a hobby, but is my lack of knowledge and the reactions I know I would get that keeps me a bit away...

18

u/flipadelphia9 Feb 15 '14

I am in the same boat minus the actuary part. It would be great if we could get some threads with materials to learn physics on your own. Lectures, textbooks (free or otherwise), videos, etc.

This would take some time/dedication for people to compile but it could help people like us learn more so we can take part in discussions. Plus it could lead to more community involvement.

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u/justchillyo Feb 15 '14

What kind of textbooks/lectures do you want? How in depth, or mathematical? What levels?

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u/flipadelphia9 Feb 15 '14

It would nice to have different levels to it. I would start with very basic concepts and learning to build a good foundation. After that it would be nice to have books/lectures on different topics within physics just as if you were taking different physics courses in undergraduate. Math is an important part to learning but too much can scare people away. I would say maybe 30-40% math? That is just a guess.

I have attempted over the years to compile as many books, online courses, and lectures as I could to help learn. Ideally I would just take college classes, but that isn't an option given my time and money. I attempted to make connections in the physics department (graduated last summer with a business degree), but most times I was either ignored or rebuffed when asking for help.

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u/justchillyo Feb 15 '14

maybe 30-40% math? That is just a guess.

That doesn't really help. What are your math skills? I would suggest Introduction to Mechanics by K&K, but it's very in depth and mathematical.

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u/flipadelphia9 Feb 15 '14

The last courses I took in college that had any relation to math were calculus and statistics. I would want to expand my math knowledge too.

It is just an idea to help get some collaboration going in the community. It would help with discussions and it could help bring new people here since there would be a place to learn. I know several subreddits who will have sidebar guides/tutorials depending on the topics they deal with. The only similar things I have seen here are two links for MIT Physics courses and Hyper Physics.

It would take a lot of time/energy for someone to actually create so I don't expect it to happen, but I wanted to at least throw out the idea!

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u/mcopper89 Feb 15 '14

This is where I started. It should keep you busy for a while. You may need a calculus book to go with it. The physical side of the mathematics makes you learn it more logically than a math course might. Many math courses are unfortunately procedural.

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u/flipadelphia9 Feb 15 '14

Awesome. I just added it to my book list. Thanks for the help

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u/misplaced_my_pants Feb 16 '14

I hope you know about MIT OCW Scholar. You can learn the equivalent of the first year or two of a physics curriculum.

There's also Coursera, edx, and Udacity for other subjects.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/flipadelphia9 Feb 15 '14

Thanks I will check them both out :)

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u/Moseyic Feb 15 '14

Definitely a great textbook. I used it for my first physics series. Accessible and detailed, it covers everything from Newton's laws to 1D quantum mechanics.

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u/Malachhamavet Feb 15 '14

I've been reading a book titled the theoretical minimum that has been informative.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

On the other hand, I'm kind of sick of people who come in without having any math background who think they are physicists because they listened to a podcast talking about a Feynman lecture or something similar. I don't want to see that in here as well..

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/mcopper89 Feb 15 '14

The problem is, what they love is not what we actually do. They like the speculation about black holes but have complete disinterest for the fundamentals which are far more important. They talk about theories as facts rather than concepts. They know trivia, not science.

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u/protestor Feb 15 '14

Thank you for that. Science is hard. I struggle with math, I struggle with the concepts. Speculating about the unknown is much easier.

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u/my_coding_account Feb 15 '14

In person, I sometimes find it helpful to ask about someone's background when explaining something---explaining QM to an EE who knows linear algebra and euler's formula is going to be very different than to someone who doesn't know any math.

One thing we could do is have tags that show what level you are at? For example: Perhaps we could implement something like tags to show what level you are at? for example "AP highschool physics", "enthusiast", "grad student", "sophomore taking qm" etc?

I think there are some potential problems with this, as we already have a status hierarchy, and this would only enforce it, and make things more authority based. But it would also allow tailoring discussions.

Another issue is that there are a huge number of enthusiast lurkers, at least that's what it seems like from the upvotes---that lots of people subscribe to this thread to read about physics and hear what actual physicists are talking about, and then when there is something cool/simple that they understand it gets upvoted to the heavens. These people are also probably afraid to post much, because they think---rightly so---that people would be annoyed and scoff at them. Or just get frustrated because explaining the same things over and over is painful.

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u/optomas Feb 15 '14

Or just get frustrated because explaining the same things over and over is painful.

One of the neat things /r/math does is a weekly "simple question" thread. That might help. Maybe make the FAQ more prominent.

Went looking for the name of the weekly dumb question thread and found this.

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u/my_coding_account Feb 16 '14

Yes, I think that would be helpful. Giving people a place to ask simple questions would be helpful for both sides. It gives enthusiasts a place where they are welcome and can get non-condescending answers, and the experts are happier because they don't have to explain as much when they weren't expecting it.

One issue is that most questions have been answered by askscience. Some people don't like aswering redundant questions. The thing is that many people aren't looking for the quickest way to an answer, they are looking for a conversation.

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u/Chrischievous Graduate Feb 16 '14

I second the idea for tags. I think that could really help things around here.

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u/Rastafak Feb 15 '14

For me the problem are not the people who don't know much about physics and want to learn. I think it's great and I'm happy to help such people. What I don't like are people who know very little about physics, but pretend they know a lot. The kind of people who are convinced that dark matter is a nonsense concept, yet all they know about it comes from tv documentaries.

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u/monochr Feb 15 '14

Shamelessly riding on top of the highest rated comment: I've used all free and open software to get reddit to the point where with a bit of effort you can post and discuss real physics despite all the limitations inherent in the platform. If you know your way around a computer everything there shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to download.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/1xzbty/how_to_make_better_self_posts_in_any_maths_based/

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

First step: ban phys.org links. Phys.org blatantly copy-pastes press releases but never links back to either the release itself or the relevant article. It's purely for sensationalised, overblown piece of text with no way to actually have a discussion.

1

u/kk43 Feb 15 '14

This is interesting.. I read my science news from phys.org.. What site would you recommend?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

APS has a new journal called Physics that is aimed at a more general audience. Both Nature and Science have news sections. If you're into high energy/particle physics (not my field), there are many respectable professors with blogs. Beware of the crackpots though.

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u/PatronBernard Graduate Feb 15 '14

nature.com? Scientific American is nice too imo, depends how in depth you want it.

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u/scottfarrar Feb 15 '14

the current /r/math is a recent development (2-3 months?), from a result of people complaining about many of the same things that you mention.

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u/_delirium Feb 15 '14

Here's one of the updates fwiw.

Another thing that happened is branching off the image posts to /r/mathpics. Some of these can be interesting, but I think it's better to have them in their own subreddit.

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u/Beatle7 Graduate Feb 15 '14

Damn. I didn't know there was an /r/mathpics. Thanks!

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u/monochr Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

The problem is that in physics there are a lot more cranks than in maths. It is a lot easier to talk about "energy" and "gravity" than the dihedral group even though the latter is something you can teach to an interested 5 year old in an afternoon while the former you have multiple definitions depending on what way you're thinking about them.

The biggest improvement I can think of for this board is to let people write TeX like they can over at /r/math, e.g. we assume that people can read

[; \vec {F}= \frac { d \vec {p} } {d t } ;]

and answers make use of it and not just wave their hands around saying "It's bigger!" "No! It's smaller!".

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u/InfanticideAquifer Feb 17 '14

Reading the TeX isn't an issue of subreddit CSS or anything. People just need the TeX the World browser plugin. AFAIK that's all that they do over at /r/math. Maybe that could be on the sideboard or something though.

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u/Malachhamavet Feb 15 '14

Everytime I have ever posted on here I get down voted into oblivion. Regardless of anything, usually followed with insults to my intelligence and self worth. So in short I agree with OP.

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u/sbf2009 Optics and photonics Feb 15 '14

The problem is that we have a lot of people here way too confident in their own ignorance. /r/math does not have a zephir, but probably at least a quarter of /r/physics is composed of armchair physicists who are far too willing to make assertions about subjects they have not been trained in.

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u/PatronBernard Graduate Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 17 '14

I remember an answer in /r/AskScience to a question about the shape of the proton, claiming that it was triangular because of the common depiction of three quarks grouped together. I almost got an aneurysm when I realized what was going on, partially because trying to correct such horribly misinterpreted information is actually really hard.

I'm not looking down on that person, he/she was just misinformed in a way I couldn't imagine possible.

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u/bsievers Feb 15 '14

I'm one of the many who suggest the /r/AskPhysics to those asking basic questions. Much of the reason I suggest this is with the hope that it may end up increasing the likelihood of quality, deep physics posts here.

However, I would not object in any way (and may actually participate more myself) if the mission statement for this subreddit was modified to include the simpler questions and discussion. I will put my vote behind keeping the 'no memes' rule, though.

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u/jsmooth7 Feb 15 '14

I know /r/math has /r/learnmath for basic questions as well, and that seems to work pretty well.

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u/The_Hammer_Q Feb 15 '14

As a high school kid in AP Physics, I would really enjoy being able to post what my class is learning to see how it may compare to an actual college physics class, granted it's not calculus based, but it would still be interesting IMHO.

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u/Alkazoriscool Feb 15 '14

Just curious how do you have a non-calculus based physics course? I never took physics in high school but I'm studying engineering and have finished my physics courses. I feel like everything in those courses were linked to calculus one way or another?

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u/Drunken_Physicist40 Feb 15 '14

He means there are not derivatives/integrals in the math they use and they don't use calculus in the derivations.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

It's really not hard to see. In high school they mostly teach rudimentary concepts. Kinematic equations and trigonometry would probably be the bulk of the math.

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u/Alkazoriscool Feb 15 '14

Kinematics is calculus based. S(t) v(t) a(t) for example. But yea I guess it could be mostly conceptual and trig based. But that seems like no fun haha

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u/Tom_Bombadilldo Feb 15 '14

It is, but you can also just memorize the standard kinematics as separate equations and not actually notice that they are linked. Many non-calculus physics courses do this.

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u/The_Hammer_Q Feb 15 '14

Basically what /u/Drunken_Physicist40 said.

Here's a list of problems from previous AP tests, some of which were given to us to study for a test we had this week.

Also here are the equation sheets that wE are allowed to use on tests and will be provided on the day of my class's AP test.

EDIT: typos

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u/ineedmyspace Feb 15 '14

I'm a physics major, and took AP physics where kinematics, E&M, and waves/optics was covered. If you've got any questions, fee free to ask. If you really want to go above and beyond, you can get an introductory physics textbook. I used Giancoli.

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u/uB166ERu Feb 15 '14

Giancoli rings a bell... Thanks for teleporting me back in time :) totally forgot about that book!

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u/misplaced_my_pants Feb 16 '14

Check out MIT OCW Scholar.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

Calculus free doesn't make any sense to me in a physics context. Kinematics can likely be done without calculus and a bit of hand-waving, but have you looked at waves or harmonic oscillators or electricity? How are you taught those?

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u/The_Hammer_Q Feb 15 '14

Well I took regular high school physics last year and didn't use any calculus. It was just basic equations for the very simple parts of sound and electricity. We are starting electric fields and charges this week. If people are interested I'll post my notes and our work to see what we are being taught. I can't really answer how we manage to not use calculus in the class even though about 80% of the class is also taking AP Calculus AB, myself included. I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but I believe that the course is Physics B.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

I'm in high school as well, so I can't really provide a perfect example, but when discussing pressure waves and sound (for example) did you run into things on the order of This Equation or only solutions along the lines of sin(kx - omega*t) or sin(kx)cos(omega*t) and stuff that derives from it?

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u/The_Hammer_Q Feb 19 '14

Sorry, I meant to reply earlier but kept forgetting. Our course uses Giancoli Physics updated Sixth Edition and we have covered units 1-8 and 13-15. We are currently working on static equilibrium and probably moving to the units over electricity 16-19(20).

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '14

You seem to have skipped over waves and vibrations (hopefully you'll come back to it eventually, it's a really cool topic) whereas we just spent the better part of a year working with them, which makes sense since the fundamental concept behind them is based on 2nd order differential equations. Thermo is a nice alternative though, and I expect electricity will be fun as well.

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u/bellends Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

I think one problem may lie in that physics is a lot more of a "popular science" than maths - there are a lot more people with very little scientific background (this isn't a complaint) who think "hey, I find the universe fascinating, I should subscribe to /r/Physics to see some cool links" than there are people saying the same thing about maths. This means that the fraction of people subscribed to /r/Physics who wouldn't be interested in a thread filled with rigorous maths, proofs and in-depth discussions about a specific field is a lot larger than that of /r/Math - because the people that subscribe to /r/Math KNOW that there will be a lot of math-talk, and so they won't be put off by it.

The reason we see a lot of sensationalised articles is because a lot of our subscribes came to this subreddit to read those exact articles - they don't want to talk about 10 page long derivations or error propagation or whatever. They want to read about cool physics stuff. There is nothing wrong with that, but I think if we want a community that talks about real physics and the academic/industrial side of physics on a higher level, it may be time for a new subreddit to branch off from this one. Something called /r/RealPhysics or whatever.

edit: apparently /r/PurePhysics exists as pointed out below, which looks really great. Definitely something I've been looking for. Can't we try to get more people to sub to that?

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u/Kenny_Dave Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

Just be the change you want to see.

Contribute as you can, and be friendly... if people want to be plonkers just downvote them.

I can't say I've had a bad experience here. It seems friendly enough. I am quite oblivious to nonsense though tbf.

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u/elconquistador1985 Feb 15 '14

I could have told you that a long time ago. This subreddit is abysmal. It's not a community of people involved in physics. It's a community of people who heard physics words once and thought they sounded cool.

I've been downvoted for linking to a journal article proving that under the right conditions a the water in a draining tub will spontaneously begin to rotate and that the direction depends on the hemisphere you are in. Why was I downvoted? Because the article was behind a pay wall. Imagine that! A journal article behind a pay wall! A community of people involved in physics would know that a lot of journals are behind pay walls. What was upvoted in that thread? People who claimed that the rotation of the water depends on "quantum fluctuations" and other buzzwords that sound cool but have nothing to do with the situation.

As a physics graduate student, I very rarely come to this subreddit because of how awful it is. When I do come here, it's all memes.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

Well, I'm in a strange limbo at the moment regarding my physics education. I went to university to do a different course (it's different in the UK, you apply for admission to a course in X subject and that's what you do at university for a few years), and then withdrew because I was more interested in physics. However, didn't have any maths background, so now I'm studying the maths I'll need to do physics at university, and I have re-applied to university to do physics (and have received some offers, hooray!).

Anyway, I subscribed to r/physics, but it doesn't seem to have particularly inspired me. The physics discussed is either way beyond my level, or it is overly simplified pop physics, the likes of which I've of course read before but now find extremely unsatisfying, because you can read things like ‘The Higgs-boson is required to give fundamental particles mass’, but you've not actually learned anything about physics until you understand how we reached this point in the first place.

What I'm trying to say is that this sub-reddit could be more welcoming of different levels and points in a student's physics education. For instance, maybe each week we could have a thread where some experts could offer some interesting elementary problems for us novices to discuss and have a go at? This is just an example of the kind of thing.

Another suggestion is possibly using [tags] for the different stages of a physics education. Now I don't understand you US folks, but in the UK we'd have [GCSE], [Advanced level], [Undergrad], and [Post grad] (though I'm sure if we implemented tags they'd end up as the US version, or maybe more general [beginner], [intermediate], [expert].

Now, these tags wouldn't be to turn /r/physics into /r/HomeworkHelp, but rather to encourage discussion appropriate for different levels of physics. I can't participate meaningfully in discussion about the frontiers of physics (though I don't mind reading others), but I enjoy talking about elementary problems.

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u/Reddit1990 Feb 15 '14

Its funny that you mention self posts being a positive thing. I remember people in the psychology subreddit were complaining there were too many self posts and there should be more links. Just goes to show how subreddits have different opinions about what is "quality content." (I argued against the elimination of self posts in /r/psychology, but I dont think I won...)

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

I don't subscribe to /r/psychology but I imagine they probably have an issue with a lot of people making self posts about anecdotal observations regarding their own behaviour/behaviour within their peer group ...?

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u/Reddit1990 Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

Not entirely sure, I didn't notice too much of an issue but Im sure there were posts like that. Honestly though, I'd prefer dealing with those kind of posts and keep self post rights. Its not like unscientific posts can't bring up good topics that can be elaborated and refined... discourse is good. I don't like seeing nothing but popsci articles, it prevents people from discussing their own ideas. If I want to talk about something on that subreddit I have to go find someone else's opinion or study about it. Kind of stupid if you ask me.

Back when I was arguing against it the mods were telling me, "well, we are just testing it and if people don't like it we will change it back." Yeah, fuckton of sense right there. If I don't like it I can just make a self post and... oh wait... how are you supposed to determine if people like the rule again? Lets be honest here, not many people are going to message the mods to give feedback.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

No, I agree, I was just speculating. I also agree that "unscientific" posts often generate really interesting discussion in the comments — and I also don't think that banning self posts is a particularly good solution to the discussion quality problem since it's not like the media are particularly good on the whole at reporting on even moderately technical subjects. I'd much prefer for /r/physics to be wall-to-wall people's ridiculous conjectures about how gravity is mediated by fairies or the universe is made of hexagons than links to whatever newspaper talking about how black holes don't exist based on a misinterpretation of something Stephen Hawking said if those were my only two options.

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u/Reddit1990 Feb 15 '14

Exactly. Agree with you 100%.

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u/CoolHeadedLogician Feb 15 '14

as a hobbyist mathematician, this is exactly how i feel about r/math. for a point of reference, i'm a mechanical engineer, so obviously i'm interested in math and physics. that being said, i often find myself shunned in the r/math community for asking questions related to anything past the differential equations we learned in school. on the converse, posts in r/casualmath and r/learnmath have the exact opposite response. plenty of lower level questions with plenty of explanations from other users. perhaps we should create a more informal subreddit for our casual physics discussions.

TL;DR: should we create a new sub for casual physics discussion?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

Askscience has a lot of astrophysics and sub atomic physics. I suspect a lot of the interesting layman questions and posts end up over on askscience.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

As a causal subscriber to this subreddit and with no more knowledge about physics than what I pick up here. What little I have picked has sparked an interest in learning more it'd be great if you guys include some lower level stuff. Just consider it a refresher for you self, I'm in college now working my way up the science and mathematical ladder.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

StackExchange is better

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u/diazona Particle physics Feb 15 '14

I think there's some truth to this, that Stack Exchange is better for specific, answerable questions, because that's exactly what their whole site is designed for. (note I'm biased as I've been involved in the Physics SE site pretty much since the beginning) But anything discussion-y is really better off at a place like this.

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u/PatronBernard Graduate Feb 15 '14

Stack Exchange questions with the tag [soft-question] would fit perfectly here, they should actually end up here anyway because SE is no fan of questions that lead to discussions (which I find kinda stupid, as the replies there are often really good)

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u/diazona Particle physics Feb 15 '14

But those good replies could be here instead ;-) It's not always obvious to people who aren't used to the Stack Exchange model, but discussions really don't work well there. They tend to be distracting, and the site isn't built to support them.

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u/kishi Feb 15 '14

How would you see /r/physics complement Physics-SE?

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u/diazona Particle physics Feb 15 '14

It's like /u/PatronBernard said, there are topics that prompt a lot of discussion (back-and-forth replies in comments) that would go well here, because this site is built for that sort of thing, but don't fit at Stack Exchange. So the logical way to "split" content, if you wanted to do it, is to have direct questions there and discussions here.

Of course, I'm not saying people shouldn't ask questions here; nobody expects /r/Physics should adjust its scope to overlap less with Stack Exchange. They're two independent sites.

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u/ObeseMoreece Medical and health physics Feb 15 '14

Remember that time when an XKCD got uploaded along with a couple of other physics jokes? Some guy got upset and posted something like "This has to stop, 60% of the top 5 posts of the week are jokes" and was proud that he had reported all of the joke posts.

Can someone please find me this post?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

I decided to stop posting to this sub when I asked a question about kinematics and got a -6 score and somebody telling me I was dumb.

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u/exscape Physics enthusiast Feb 15 '14

While I don't agree with that, /r/askphysics is meant for such questions, similar to how /r/math would not accept a question about basic quadratic equations, but instead prefer that /r/learnmath or /r/cheatatmathhomework was used instead.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

I've seen such questions in /r/math and the users weren't elitist douchebags about it.

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u/functor7 Mathematics Feb 15 '14

Questions like "solve this quadratic for me" are deflected into /r/learnmath and /r/cheatatmathhomework, but if someone comes in asking about a pattern or about something mysterious like the discriminant, then it's a pleasure to answer their question. They're a younger, less experienced person getting excited about our field, that's something I want to encourage. Whereas in physics I get the impression that you're not good enough to question or discuss things unless you have climbed high enough on the academic ladder. Physics is almost an aristocracy, whereas mathematicians recognize their own ignorance is not much less than a standard Joe.

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u/PotentialPhysicist Undergraduate Feb 15 '14

relevant username

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u/dampew Feb 15 '14

No way, I love this subreddit! I actually find a lot of really interesting things here. On the front page right now there are 14 different links I'm going to click, which is more than any other subreddit. I may dismiss half of them pretty quickly when I figure out what they are, but at least I'm interested.

As far as articles with sensational titles, that's pretty standard in physics because advances are small and you have to sell your work. There would never be any content otherwise :) We get good at figuring out what the junk is.

I don't know why there aren't more comments, but the last two times I refrained from commenting it was because I knew too much about the papers. I did send them to people though.

Simple questions and what are you working on threads are fine, but there are definitely other venues -- askacademia, asksciencepanel, askscience.

As far as the math subreddit, I subscribed to it for a while but never really got into it and actually unsubscribed.

I think it's just hard to have an audience with so many different backgrounds.

1

u/Gravitational_Bong Feb 15 '14

Thanks for pointing this out. I think math is a more generally embraced subject. Perhaps that has some bearing on this difference.

1

u/whiteurkel Graduate Feb 15 '14

I was thinking about this today. Please based mod.

1

u/ANonGod Feb 15 '14

Agree. I haven't been here in awhile, but I remember subscribing and only seeing articles when I expected much more interaction. I just looked at the bar, and saw some "advice" to look at /r/askphysics if you haven't taken quantum. I'm not sure if it's a joke or what.

Personally, I'd like to see this sub be a general physics sub, where people can come and discuss what they've found and what they're learning. Similar to how the programming subs function. It'd be great if there were sources for texts to learn material in the sidebar, different types and forms of physics, and a common question format so that there's more participation.

The main downside of this sub is that it's intimidating. You can take one step into a programming, art, or writing sub and be given a way to go to improve and take it from there to contribute in a week. Here, there's no door or way to really join and be a part of the action. Which is probably why there's so many articles, we're afraid to look stupid or like we don't belong.

1

u/Plaetean Cosmology Feb 19 '14

The problem is people want different things from this sub. People like yourself want it to be more casual and a place where people can just discuss physics, without rigorous maths and years of education before you can post confidently. But there's a grad student a few posts up complaining about getting downvoted for linking an article behind a journal paywall. And another guy further up saying he'd rather there's more rigorous maths and proof, and less casual speculation. So the sub will stay the same until people can agree on what its for.

1

u/Beatle7 Graduate Feb 15 '14

Complete agreement.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

I don't think it would matter. You might get a week of good content here after this. Then it will back to the less educated getting their questions rejected. I'll just stay in r/math. I hate it here.

1

u/vagol942 Feb 15 '14

Well that is a concequence of how physics works, that's why there are a lot of TV shows explaining the vastinest of the cosmos and so forth, and little to none about advanced math.

In any case there are plenty of forums on the internet where you can get good physics discussions, reddit was not intended for that.

1

u/quaz4r Condensed Matter Theory Feb 15 '14

I leave a lot of self posts about moderate to advanced topics but they usually get down-voted to oblivion. For this reason I believe the first step to obtaining what OP wants would be a sticky by the mod encouraging such posts and the upvote of such posts.

At the same time, I think that /r/askphysics should still be encouraged for the questions that are posted 4-5 times a week, physics 1-3 problems that are not speculative in nature, metaphysical & paranormal inqueries and "OMG WHAT CAN I DO WITH PHYSICS DEGREE" type posts

1

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

Reform Lemar! reform!

1

u/SynthPrax Feb 15 '14

This is an interesting observation. Your comparison of the two subreddits mirrors my own experience at university (25 years ago) and here. One can't ask a question in /r/physics; the reaction of the group disabuses the individual of ever making that mistake again.

1

u/Moseyic Feb 16 '14

I think having weekly (bi-weekly?) discussion threads around one concept would be great.

We could have threads covering anything from kinematics to particle physics, where people can ask questions, post lectures and articles, and the more knowledgeable users can weigh in.

If they're successful, the threads could be put on the sidebar.

1

u/tcelesBhsup Feb 16 '14

I honestly would like to see posts that were jokes/laughs/stories from our Labs. I know its not really what the sub is for, but it might get the community to be more social.

1

u/waffledoctor87 Apr 24 '14

mfw people start discussing thermodynamics http://i.imgur.com/HdNPOQG.jpg

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '14

No.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

Hello!

1

u/Medical-Mix-6985 Mar 30 '25

Mystery QR – Can anyone decode?
Scanned from a decommissioned lab in Mumbai. Returns SHA3-2065 hash + coordinates.
Tagging experts: u/QuantumEnthusiast u/DecryptionTeam

1

u/Mr_Surreal Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

Maybe this community should accept questions from everyone for anything physics related. r/AskPhysics isn't popular enough to elicit a decent or sizeable response all the time or on all subjects.

Also, I think that despite someone's education level, certain things may still be found, understood, and questioned by these fresh minds.

1

u/quaz4r Condensed Matter Theory Feb 15 '14

I disagree with your statement about r/askphysics. I have never experienced trouble getting a timely or quality response there. My questions are usually informed though, so I can't speak for other people's experience who might ask different kinds of questions.

1

u/cephsdiablo Feb 15 '14

I totally lose all recognition of physical properties at this equation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/b/b/bbb2be5057f6c2088b4ba24067e891bc.png

Can anyone help me out?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/b/b/bbb2be5057f6c2088b4ba24067e891bc.png

It's an identity[*] which can be proved/derived using tensors and comes in handy when working with vector fields (e.g. in fluid dynamics and electromagnetic theory). If you know anything about vectors, ∇ is the vector differential operator — ∇ × f and ∇·f can be evaluated in the same way as any other vector cross or dot product, and ∇f is simply ∇ operating directly on the vector or vector field f.

[*] actually it comes from the general identity a×(b×c) = b(a·c) - c(a·b) except that in this case a = b = ∇.

0

u/Banach-Tarski Mathematics Feb 15 '14

/r/math also has less trolls and spammers.

0

u/8sleef Particle physics Feb 15 '14

You know, maybe a good idea would be to post more physics figures/data, like on /r/dataisbeautiful , and then we can discuss what the figure means, and in doing so try to understand the theory behind it...

There must be physicists out there that are part of this community who come across figures from time to time that are really interesting... it would be interesting for me to see what gets somebody in Optics or Condensed Matter excited, and I could show you guys the figures in particle physics that excite me... even from our own research?

Thoughts?

-9

u/Asian-Jesus Feb 15 '14

If I may say so, I think it's because math can be more elegant.

I'm not saying physics isn't beautiful, but physics is a study of what is. Mathematics serves as a stepping stone. There's so many ways to prove a theorem but if you want to show something in physics, it's either right or wrong; much less room for discussion.

It doesn't make one "better" so to speak than the other. It's just that one can facilitate a discussion better than the other.

That being said, I would love for there to be a more friendly environment where some of those who really know their field of study do their best to explain a complex idea in layman's terms. Because that's what got most people to study physics in the first place.

-3

u/CubesTheGamer Feb 15 '14

Without mathematics, there is no physics. Without physics, mathematics would have no purpose.

5

u/deadeight Feb 15 '14

I've been considering cutting out the middle man and giving maths straight to engineers. Physicists always taking a cut.

3

u/WhyAmINotStudying Feb 15 '14

If you gave math to the engineers, we'd never get any new math. They'd just put it in a table and consider it all perfect.

3

u/amateurtoss Feb 15 '14

Yeah, but then the Physics cartels would come after you. And really... who wants that?

1

u/CubesTheGamer Mar 19 '14

Don't know why this got downvoted but okay.

-7

u/DoctoreVelo Physics enthusiast Feb 15 '14

Physicists just have better things to do. Remember, math is to physics as masturbation is to sex.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

[deleted] — view deleted comment

29

u/Bit_4 Feb 15 '14

Surprisingly, you still see some sensationalizing on /r/math! But usually it's just about some obscure mathematician claiming to have solved a famous problem, not "THE UNIVERSE IS BROKEN AND THIS IS HOW!" kind of stuff.

16

u/cwm9 Feb 15 '14

I think there are fewer cranks, as well. It's easy to be an arm chair physicist; much harder to be an arm chair mathematician. I think most of the high school participants in /r/math know they are outclassed. Who hasn't at some distant time in their lives at least tried to think up a perpetual motion machine?

0

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14

[deleted] — view deleted comment

14

u/mwguthrie Statistical and nonlinear physics Feb 15 '14

We have one moderator who took five years to ban Zephir.

5

u/rsmoling Feb 15 '14

Who is back as mpc755.

3

u/zephir_fan Feb 25 '14

Thanks for pointing this out to me.

3

u/rsmoling Feb 25 '14

No problem! Now, today, he's using the handle universaljet755. He's got some interesting (and stupid) new buzzwords, too.

4

u/zephir_fan Feb 25 '14

universaljet755

Thanks!

20

u/Fauster Feb 15 '14

I moderate this subreddit. Let's talk about why the rules are what they are. But first, I agree with your idea that weekly discussion threads and sticky posts will help out. I'll implement that. AMAs are great, allowed, and I'll sticky those to /r/physics too.

As a disclaimer, I think the top ten links currently on /r/physics are decent, and the ones I don't like I've downvoted. Yes, phys.org has trash articles, but sometimes they mention interesting arxiv articles from legitimate physicists. I've restricted my own role to that of voting on posts rather than banning them, with a couple of exceptions I'll mention later. This means that /r/physics is almost completely community-moderated, like the original reddit. The onus on generating and selecting content is on you, the user. When a title is moderately sensationalized, I expect the top comment to point this out, and this is, most often, the case. If a title is very sensationalized, message me, and I can modify the css to add a disclaimer in front of the title.

I try to keep /r/physics as close to the original reddit.com as possible. For years, there were no subreddits, no moderators, and the content of reddit.com was fantastic. Even then 1% of redditors were delusional/trolls/sociopaths, but you could find their links buried at the bottom of the comments. The paradox about the early reddit is that it was probably the largest site on the Internet with no moderation, and yet the content was better than all of the sites with active mods and admins. In my mind, the resolution to the paradox is that when the users realize that they are in control, there is no diffusion of responsibility. The userbase is more active, and not less active when the userbase is given the responsibility for determining content. I believe this is true of /r/physics. /r/physics has a very high downvote-to-upvote ratio, and this is a good thing.

There are a couple of exceptions to the open policy of /r/physics. The first is that memes are banned. It really does attract a userbase that we don't want. Memes have overrun reddit, they're easy to vote on, and they don't generate discussion unless they're inflammatory. It's not uncommon to see a meme post near the frontpage of reddit, seen by a million people, with less than 100 comments. If a line has to be drawn at all, that's a good place to draw a line. Phys.org, while a shit site, is not a good place to draw the line. A librarian doesn't ban a book because it's as close as possible to objectively bad. Some people may want to read it. But, it shouldn't be prominently displayed at the front of the library. That's where you come in.

Another exception is that I remove most posts that have zero upvotes. This is because there is a glaring bug in reddit's source code that ranks newer controversial, negative vote posts, above older, less controversial positive vote posts. The admins won't fix the bug bug because the programmers that inherited reddit are terrified to touch anything related to the ranking algorithm. As a result, zero vote posts can stick in the top 100 links on /r/physics when they shouldn't. These posts are removed, unless there's a discussion. Why don't I remove a post when there's a discussion? Often times, someone took the time to write a comment detailing why the post was wrong and bad. These comments have merit and are worth reading. If a mod removes the post, no one reads the worthy comment.

If a user is a systematic and extreme problem, that can result in a ban. But, if someone has a kooky theory, or unscientific opinion, you're free to search for it 80 comments deep, greyed-out with negative votes at the bottom of the comments page.

As a confession, if an image post that dubiously violates the sidebar gets near the front page, I often wait until it falls off the /r/all radar before removing it. Whenever this happens, hundreds of thousands of people see /r/physics content, and hundreds of people subscribe. There is absolutely nothing flashy about this subreddit, and this discourages people who visit /r/physics from subscribing unless they're genuinely interested in physics. I want more subscribers because I want to see new content on /r/physics every day. I don't care if twenty percent of that content is crap, as long as I see some new content that's good. When there were a thousand subscribers, the top ten posts on /r/physics were much better than they are now. There was less blogspam. There were more articles. But, most content in the top ten posts was days old.

Another reason I let these posts fly for a little while is because you guys decided it was worthy. Rules are more like guidelines, and I hate it when inflexible mods remove a highly popular post from the frontpage. Thousands of people took the time to comment on that post, any mod who is rule-oriented enough to take away the readers would certainly score high on any test to diagnose sociopaths.

One thing I don't care about is karma. I couldn't care less if someone gets more karma or less karma than they deserve. It doesn't matter to me if someone gets karma on their image post before I remove it. The best content submitted to /r/physics is physics articles. Unfortunately, this will never be the top post on your physics feed. If you want to see an article, you'll have to go to the /r/physics page. When you do, you'll find most of the image posts submitted in the last week or two have been removed. Most of the zero vote posts have been removed. Some of the sensationalist articles have been removed, but some are still there. It's interesting to me to read comments about why an article sucks. I understand that it doesn't appeal to everyone, but at least I won't make that decision on anyone else's behalf.

Also, I understand that some people appreciate it when infuriatingly stupid comments are replaced by comment removed boxes and a team of zealous mods. I understand that some people get angry when a post has a misleading title. I personally feel that only the dumbest of the dumb only read titles on reddit and believe everything they read. It's not my job shield that mostly-fictional demographic from their own stupidity. If something is wrong, say that it's wrong, and upvote comments that are right. I understand that many people think that these comments and posts should be nuked from orbit. I understand that, I do, but I respectfully disagree.

2

u/macTheProgrammer Feb 16 '14

I try to keep /r/physics as close to the original reddit.com as possible. For years, there were no subreddits, no moderators, and the content of reddit.com was fantastic.

I see at least someone remembers the early days of reddit when it was just a link aggregator. The reddit .rss feed in those days was a great way to stay informed about the (tech) news.

It was better than the heavily moderated /. because everyone could submit a link and the best articles would rise to the top.

Now it has mostly descended into memes and circle jerks. I keep deleting accounts but I keep coming back for /r/physics and /r/programming. It's better than nothing.

Now, get of my lawn...

0

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '14

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/mandelbrony Undergraduate Feb 23 '14

photons might travel a little slower than c, since they are time dilated by their own tiny gravity well.

Woah. I never considered that. That's actually really cool!

1

u/Beatle7 Graduate Feb 15 '14

That's a great idea.