Many of the high school students who sought advice from Cognito Mentoring were interested in mathematics, computer science, and physics. This both makes sense and is valuable. Mathematics has many benefits: it underpins a lot of quantitative analysis, and helps us understand the world. Computer science is also quite important for obvious reasons: programming in particular is directly and indirectly useful, and a deeper understanding of algorithms and the theory of computation can help with algorithms.
Physics, however, is a little different. There are some benefits of learning physics. In particular, classical mechanics is often people's first exposure to using mathematical structure in a nontrivial way to understand and model situations pertaining to the real world. Nonetheless, unlike mathematics or computer science, the benefits of physics for people who are not in science or engineering careers are fairly low. I find myself using high school-level mathematical intuition on a regular basis (for instance, understanding the growth trajectories of various things, or interpreting graphs), and I find myself using basic programming-like intuition quite often. But I rarely find myself using my physics intuition in the real world. Moreover, I think physics quickly hits diminishing returns in terms of teaching people about mathematical modeling: I'd say that the returns from physics beyond classical mechanics, DC circuits, and basic thermodynamics are near-zero. For instance, I'd say it's more beneficial to learn microeconomics rather than electromagnetism, even though the latter is often considered more prestigious by smart people. Similarly, I think that behavioral economics is more valuable than quantum mechanics.
It's also not clear that learning physics beyond the basics suggested above (classical mechanics, thermodynamics, DC circuits) passes a cost-benefit analysis for people in the vast majority of science-based and engineering-based careers. Even the extent to which they crucially rely on these basics is questionable, given that most people don't learn the basics well and still manage to go on to do decent jobs. I'd like to hear any opinions on this. On a related note, I recently asked on Quora the question In what ways is knowledge of Newtonian classical mechanics helpful to people pursuing biomedical research? and there were a few interesting answers.
So my question: what attracts smart and curious young people to physics? Are the smartest people too attracted by physics, relative to its real-world applicability? Does the intellectual stimulation provided by physics justify the attraction? Is there some sort of mood affiliation going on here, where the smartest people are pulled to physics to distinguish themselves from the crowd, insofar as physics is more difficult and repels the crowd? To the extent that people overvalue physics, does it make sense to push them at the margin away from physics and in the direction of computer science or economics or some other subject? Or should their interest in physics be encouraged?
Thoughts on your personal experience, as well as thoughts on the general points about the usefulness and attractiveness of learning physics, would be appreciated.
PS: In a video, Eric Mazur describes research related to the Force Concept Inventory: people often learn how to solve complicated mechanics problems by pattern-matching but fail to demonstrate clear understanding of Newton's Third Law. Similarly, people can predict potential differences and current flows in complicated circuits using Kirchhoff's laws, yet fail to predict that if you short a circuit, all the current will flow through the short. (The latter failure of prediction occurred in an end-of-course examination co-taught by Mazur to Harvard University first-year students, many of whom were planning to go on to medical school.
PS2: My collaborator Jonah Sinick's Quora post (no login needed to view) titled Is math privileged for gifted children is somewhat related.
So, as a grad student in physics I had a bunch of reactions to this post, most of which aren't particularly coherent or well thought out. A few thoughts:
-As much as I don't want to admit it, physics being at least somewhat overvalued among smart students seems plausible to me. To the extent that it is, my gut tells me it would mostly be due to intelligence signalling reasons, as you mentioned.
-What drives smart and curious students to physics? My initial reaction was to blink, and say "Why wouldn't smart and curious students want to go into physics? Physics is awesome!" I suspect that most people who end up going into physics would have a similar reaction. They (we) just find it...sort of intrinsically interesting. In a more general sense though, what curious people end up curious about is probably a complicated function of their brain wiring and upbringing and whatnot, but it seems like a very common flavour for curiosity to take on is an interest in the fundamental. If you're curious you want to understand how the world really works at the bottom level. Obviously people have different feelings on what the most "fundamental" field is (plausible cases can be made for math, philosophy, and computer science, I would say), but a significant number of people (including myself) would single out physics.
-Aren't you cherry picking a bit with your math and computer science examples? What about a math student who focuses on differential geometry or number theory, or a CS major who focuses on computational complexity theory? Are they going to get many real-world skills out of their degree? They'll get the basics in their first couple years, sure, but if that's your criteria then I think physics is at least comparable - certainly you'll learn just as much if not more in terms of applied math skills. I guess what I'm saying is, as long as you're granting that abstract-seeming degrees can have value due to a) some base level of directly applicable skills you learn and b) intangible benefits from improved thinking, then it seems like physics would qualify just as much as Math/CS. All three can veer off into the wildly esoteric.
-On that note, I think you might be underestimating the degree to which physics teaches math skills. In physics we took a number of upper year math courses, which of course had a good number of math majors enrolled as well. Generally speaking, the physicists did just as well as the math majors, and in most cases noticeably better. An example: everyone I knew in physics found the 3rd year differential equations course to be a joke compared to our other courses. At the end of the year we were all surprised to learn that the class average was a mere C+. I can't imagine that the average among physics majors was less than an A- (maybe B+). The pattern seemed to hold for all the of the applied math courses we took (naturally, the math majors seemed to outperform physicists in more traditionally "mathy" courses that I took, like analysis and advanced linear algebra). Based on my experience I don't think physics hits diminishing returns on teaching mathematical modelling any more than math itself does (maybe Econ is better than both, I don't know).
-Finally, I guess I should say that I personally feel like I got huge value out of my degree (my undergrad anyway - grad school, much less so). This I think is due to two main reasons. The first is just that physics is an incredibly intense and difficult degree - it's like a boot camp for your brain. Four years of physics rewired my thinking and made me an immensely better problem solver. However, to the extent that that's true, I think you could get similar benefits from another abstract degree, as long as it's just as intensive. The second and more important reason is that physics hugely expanded my mental vocabulary of analogies, and ways of thinking about things. You saying that you don't use physics intuitions in day-to-day life just seems bizarre to me - I use them all the time! I find it noticeably easier to talk to other physicists about complicated things, even if they're not physics related, just because we have such a rich set of mutually understood analogies to draw on. So my subjective impressions differ from yours in this case.
On a more meta note: I hadn't realized quite how much of my identity is tied up with being a physicist. Reading this post felt almost like an attack to me. I should probably try to get better at noticing that "under attack" feeling when it happens, and use it as a warning flag for identity politics being at play.
Thanks for your response.
I agree that the general criticisms that I made of physics can also be leveled against most upper-division undergraduate mathematics courses (i.e., stuff that is generally taken only by math majors). That's a topic that I plan to take up some other time. (As a math Ph.D., I certainly enjoyed a lot of upper-division mathematics).
What I think distinguishes physics from mathematics is that the diminishing returns from physics start setting in earlier than they do for mathematics, and the extent of applicability of physics is more limi... (read more)