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The expansion of the universe according to the Big Bang theory in physics

Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.

Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in these and other academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy.

Advances in physics often enable new technologies. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism, solid-state physics, and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus. (Full article...)

Featured article -

This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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Hydrogen atomic orbitals at different energy levels. The more opaque areas are where one is most likely to find an electron at any given time.

The electron (
e⁻
, or
β⁻
in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron's mass is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton. Quantum mechanical properties of the electron include an intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of a half-integer value, expressed in units of the reduced Planck constant, ħ. Being fermions, no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state, per the Pauli exclusion principle. Like all elementary particles, electrons exhibit properties of both particles and waves: They can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. The wave properties of electrons are easier to observe with experiments than those of other particles like neutrons and protons because electrons have a lower mass and hence a longer de Broglie wavelength for a given energy.

Electrons play an essential role in numerous physical phenomena, such as electricity, magnetism, chemistry, and thermal conductivity; they also participate in gravitational, electromagnetic, and weak interactions. Since an electron has charge, it has a surrounding electric field; if that electron is moving relative to an observer, the observer will observe it to generate a magnetic field. Electromagnetic fields produced from other sources will affect the motion of an electron according to the Lorentz force law. Electrons radiate or absorb energy in the form of photons when they are accelerated. (Full article...)

Did you know -

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1913, published in 1914)

• ... that Virendra Singh delivered the inaugural Homi Bhabha exchange lecture of the Institute of Physics and Indian Physics Association in 2000?

• ... that Leiden Law School is housed in the former laboratory of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, a physicist and Nobel laureate?

Selected image -

Discovery of Pluto's fifth moon:

Hubble Space Telescope discovery of Styx, Pluto's fifth moon. (also informally known as P5) is a small natural satellite of Pluto whose discovery was announced on 11 July 2012. It is the fifth confirmed satellite of Pluto, and was found approximately one year after S/2011 (134340) 1 (or "P4"), Pluto's fourth discovered satellite. The moon is estimated to have a diameter of between 10 and 25 kilometers (6 and 16 mi), and orbital period of 20.2 ± 0.1 days.

Related portals

Good articles -

These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

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  Bruno Benedetto Rossi (/ˈrɒsi/; Italian: [ˈrossi]; 13 April 1905 – 21 November 1993) was an Italian experimental physicist. He made major contributions to particle physics and the study of cosmic rays. A 1927 graduate of the University of Bologna, he became interested in cosmic rays. To study them, he invented an improved electronic coincidence circuit, and travelled to Eritrea to conduct experiments that showed that cosmic ray intensity from the West was significantly larger than that from the East.
  
  Forced to emigrate in October 1938 due to the Italian racial laws, Rossi moved to Denmark, where he worked with Niels Bohr. He then moved to Britain, where he worked with Patrick Blackett at the University of Manchester. Finally he went to the United States, where he worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, and later at Cornell University. Rossi stayed in the United States, and became an American Citizen. (Full article...)
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  Critchfield's Los Alamos ID badge photo

  
  Charles Louis Critchfield (June 7, 1910 – February 12, 1994) was an American mathematical physicist. A graduate of George Washington University, where he earned his PhD in physics under the direction of Edward Teller in 1939, he conducted research in ballistics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and received three patents for improved sabot designs.
  
  In 1943, Teller and Robert Oppenheimer persuaded Critchfield to come to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he joined the Ordnance Division under Captain William Parsons on the gun-type fission weapons, Little Boy and Thin Man. After it was discovered that the Thin Man design would not work, he was transferred to Robert Bacher's Gadget Division as the leader of the Initiator group, which was responsible for the design and testing of the "Urchin" neutron initiator that provided the burst of neutrons that kick-started the nuclear detonation of the Fat Man weapon. (Full article...)
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  Foster's reactance theorem is an important theorem in the fields of electrical network analysis and synthesis. The theorem states that the reactance of a passive, lossless two-terminal (one-port) network always strictly monotonically increases with frequency. It is easily seen that the reactances of inductors and capacitors individually increase with frequency and from that basis a proof for passive lossless networks generally can be constructed. The proof of the theorem was presented by Ronald Martin Foster in 1924, although the principle had been published earlier by Foster's colleagues at American Telephone & Telegraph.
  
  The theorem can be extended to admittances and the encompassing concept of immittances. A consequence of Foster's theorem is that zeros and poles of the reactance must alternate with frequency. Foster used this property to develop two canonical forms for realising these networks. Foster's work was an important starting point for the development of network synthesis. (Full article...)
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  A waterspout near Florida in 1969. Two flares with smoke trails (near base of photograph) have been discharged to indicate wind direction and general speed.

  
  A waterspout is a rotating column of air that occurs over a body of water, usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud in contact with the water and a cumuliform cloud. There are two types of waterspout, each formed by distinct mechanisms. The most common type is a weak vortex known as a "fair weather" or "non-tornadic" waterspout. The other less common type is simply a classic tornado occurring over water rather than land, known as a "tornadic", "supercellular", or "mesocyclonic" waterspout, and accurately a "tornado over water". A fair weather waterspout has a five-part life cycle: formation of a dark spot on the water surface; spiral pattern on the water surface; formation of a spray ring; development of a visible condensation funnel; and ultimately, decay. Most waterspouts do not suck up water.
  
  While waterspouts form mostly in tropical and subtropical areas, they are also reported in Europe, Western Asia (the Middle East), Australia, New Zealand, the Great Lakes, Antarctica, and on rare occasions, the Great Salt Lake. Some are also found on the East Coast of the United States, and the coast of California. Although rare, waterspouts have been observed in connection with lake-effect snow precipitation bands. (Full article...)
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  Birch, c. 1970

  
  Albert Francis Birch (August 22, 1903 – January 30, 1992) was an American geophysicist. He is considered one of the founders of solid Earth geophysics. He is also known for his part in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  
  During World War II, Birch participated in the Manhattan Project, working on the design and development of the gun-type nuclear weapon known as Little Boy. He oversaw its manufacture, and went to Tinian to supervise its assembly and loading into Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress tasked with dropping the bomb. (Full article...)
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  Wu and wife Li Minhua, c. 1943

  
  Wu Zhonghua (Chinese: 吴仲华; 27 July 1917 – 19 September 1992), also known as Chung-Hua Wu, was a Chinese physicist. He was a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) researcher, Tsinghua University professor, and Founding Director of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He pioneered the general theory of three-dimensional flow for turbomachinery, which has been widely used in aircraft engine designs. Wu and his wife Li Minhua were both academicians of the CAS.
  
  Born in Shanghai, Wu's college education at Tsinghua University was interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War. He graduated from the temporary National Southwestern Associated University and was awarded a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. After earning his Ph.D., he joined the NACA, the predecessor of NASA, where he developed the theory of three-dimensional flow. (Full article...)
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  Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge (July 27, 1904 – July 14, 1996) was an American physicist at Harvard University who worked on cyclotron research. His accurate measurements of mass differences between nuclear isotopes allowed him to confirm Albert Einstein's mass–energy equivalence concept. He was the Director of the Manhattan Project's Trinity nuclear test, which took place July 16, 1945. Bainbridge described the Trinity explosion as a "foul and awesome display". He remarked to J. Robert Oppenheimer immediately after the test, "Now we are all sons of bitches." This marked the beginning of his dedication to ending the testing of nuclear weapons and to efforts to maintain civilian control of future developments in that field. (Full article...)
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  "Thin Man" plutonium gun test casings

  
  "Thin Man" was the code name for a proposed plutonium-fueled gun-type nuclear bomb that the United States was developing during the Manhattan Project. Its development was abandoned in 1944 after it was discovered that the spontaneous fission rate of nuclear reactor-bred plutonium was too high for use in a gun-type design due to the high concentration of the isotope plutonium-240. (Full article...)
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  An antimetric electrical network is an electrical network that exhibits anti-symmetrical electrical properties. The term is often encountered in filter theory, but it applies to general electrical network analysis. Antimetric is the diametrical opposite of symmetric; it does not merely mean "asymmetric" (i.e., "lacking symmetry"). It is possible for networks to be symmetric or antimetric in their electrical properties without being physically or topologically symmetric or antimetric. (Full article...)
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  The SI system after the 2019 definition: Base units as defined in terms of physical constants and other base units. Here, $a\rightarrow b$ means $a$ is used in the definition of $b$.

  
  In 2019, four of the seven SI base units specified in the International System of Quantities were redefined in terms of natural physical constants, rather than human artifacts such as the standard kilogram. Effective 20 May 2019, the 144th anniversary of the Metre Convention, the kilogram, ampere, kelvin, and mole are now defined by setting exact numerical values, when expressed in SI units, for the Planck constant (h), the elementary electric charge (e), the Boltzmann constant (k_B), and the Avogadro constant (N_A), respectively. The second, metre, and candela had previously been redefined using physical constants. The four new definitions aimed to improve the SI without changing the value of any units, ensuring continuity with existing measurements. In November 2018, the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) unanimously approved these changes, which the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) had proposed earlier that year after determining that previously agreed conditions for the change had been met. These conditions were satisfied by a series of experiments that measured the constants to high accuracy relative to the old SI definitions, and were the culmination of decades of research.
  
  The previous major change of the metric system occurred in 1960 when the International System of Units (SI) was formally published. At this time the metre was redefined: the definition was changed from the prototype of the metre to a certain number of wavelengths of a spectral line of a krypton-86 radiation, making it derivable from universal natural phenomena. The kilogram remained defined by a physical prototype, leaving it the only artifact upon which the SI unit definitions depend. At this time the SI, as a coherent system, was constructed around seven base units, powers of which were used to construct all other units. With the 2019 redefinition, the SI is constructed around seven defining constants, allowing all units to be constructed directly from these constants. The designation of base units is retained but is no longer essential to define the SI units. (Full article...)
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  A 1933 portrait of Whittaker by Arthur Trevor Haddon titled Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker

  
  Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker FRS FRSE (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th century who contributed widely to applied mathematics and was renowned for his research in mathematical physics and numerical analysis, including the theory of special functions, along with his contributions to astronomy, celestial mechanics, the history of physics, and digital signal processing.
  
  Among the most influential publications in Whittaker's bibliography, he authored several popular reference works in mathematics, physics, and the history of science, including A Course of Modern Analysis (better known as Whittaker and Watson), Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies, and A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity. Whittaker is also remembered for his role in the relativity priority dispute, as he credited Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz with developing special relativity in the second volume of his History, a dispute which has lasted several decades, though scientific consensus has remained with Einstein. Whittaker served as the Royal Astronomer of Ireland early in his career, a position he held from 1906 through 1912, before moving on to the chair of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh for the next three decades and, towards the end of his career, received the Copley Medal and was knighted. The School of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh holds The Whittaker Colloquium, a yearly lecture, in his honour and the Edinburgh Mathematical Society promotes an outstanding young Scottish mathematician once every four years with the Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize, also given in his honour. (Full article...)
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  A gravity bong, also known as a GB, bucket bong, grav, geeb, gibby, yoin, or ghetto bong, is a method of consuming smokable substances such as cannabis. The term describes both a bucket bong and a waterfall bong, since both use air pressure and water to draw smoke. A lung uses similar equipment but instead of water draws the smoke by removing a compacted plastic bag or similar from the chamber.
  
  The bucket bong is made out of two containers, with the larger, open top container filled with water. The smaller has an attached bowl and open bottom, and the smaller is placed into the larger. Once the bowl is lit, the operator must move the small container up, causing a pressure difference. Smoke slowly fills the small jar until the user removes the bowl and inhales the contents. A waterfall bong is made up of only one container. The container must have a bowl and a small hole near the base so the water can drain easily. As the water flows out of the container, air is forced through the bowl and causes the substance to burn and accumulate smoke in the bong. (Full article...)
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  Raman in 1930

  
  Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman FRS (/ˈrɑːmən/; 7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist known for his work in the field of light scattering. Using a spectrograph that he developed, he and his student K. S. Krishnan discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the deflected light changes its wavelength. This phenomenon, a hitherto unknown type of scattering of light, which they called "modified scattering" was subsequently termed the Raman effect or Raman scattering. Raman received the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and was the first Asian and the first non-White to receive a Nobel Prize in any branch of science.
  
  Born to Tamil Brahmin parents, Raman was a precocious child, completing his secondary and higher secondary education from St Aloysius' Anglo-Indian High School at the age of 11 and 13, respectively. He topped the bachelor's degree examination of the University of Madras with honours in physics from Presidency College at age 16. His first research paper, on diffraction of light, was published in 1906 while he was still a graduate student. The next year he obtained a master's degree. He joined the Indian Finance Service in Calcutta as Assistant Accountant General at age 19. There he became acquainted with the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), the first research institute in India, which allowed him to carry out independent research and where he made his major contributions in acoustics and optics. (Full article...)
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  Fredrik Carl Mülertz Størmer (3 September 1874 – 13 August 1957) was a Norwegian mathematician and astrophysicist. In mathematics, he is known for his work in number theory, including the calculation of π and Størmer's theorem on consecutive smooth numbers. In physics, he is known for studying the movement of charged particles in the magnetosphere and the formation of aurorae, and for his book on these subjects, From the Depths of Space to the Heart of the Atom. He worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at the University of Oslo in Norway. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him. (Full article...)
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  Fluorescent lamp, a device with negative differential resistance. In operation, an increase in current through the fluorescent tube causes a drop in voltage across it. If the tube were connected directly to the power line, the falling tube voltage would cause more and more current to flow, causing it to arc flash and destroy itself. To prevent this, fluorescent tubes are connected to the power line through a ballast. The ballast adds positive impedance (AC resistance) to the circuit to counteract the negative resistance of the tube, limiting the current.

  
  
  In electronics, negative resistance (NR) is a property of some electrical circuits and devices in which an increase in voltage across the device's terminals results in a decrease in electric current through it.
  
  This is in contrast to an ordinary resistor in which an increase of applied voltage causes a proportional increase in current due to Ohm's law, resulting in a positive resistance. Under certain conditions it can increase the power of an electrical signal, amplifying it. (Full article...)

June anniversaries

First American spacewalker. During the 1965 Gemini IV mission, Ed White became the first American astronaut to perform a spacewalk.

• 1 June 1831 – James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole.
• 1 June 1869 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric voting machine.
• 1 June 1910 – Robert Falcon Scott expedition leaves England for South Pole.
• 1 June 1978 – First Patent Cooperation Treaty international filings.
• 1 June 1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
• 1 June 1990 – Bush and Gorbachev sign chemical weapons ban.
• 1 June 2000 – Patent Law Treaty is signed.
• 2 June 1966 – Surveyor 1 lands on the Moon.
• 2 June 2003 - ESA launches Mars Express probe to Mars.
• 3 June 1965 - First American spacewalk, mission Gemini IV
• 3 June 1973 – A Soviet supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 crashes.
• 4 June 781 BC – First historic solar eclipse is recorded in China.
• 4 June 1973 – A patent for the ATM is granted.
• 4 June 1996 - First flight. Ariane 5 rocket explodes after roughly 20 seconds.
• 5 June 1977 – Apple II, personal computer goes on sale.

Birthdays

• 1 June 1633 – Geminiano Montanari, Italian astronomer (d. 1687)
• 1 June 1796 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, French physicist (d. 1832)
• 1 June 1899 – Edward Charles Titchmarsh, English mathematician (d. 1963)
• 1 June 1907 – Frank Whittle, invented jet engine. (d. 1996)
• 1 June 1917 – William S. Knowles Nobel Prize laureate
• 1 June 1940 – Kip Thorne, American physicist
• 2 June 1930 – Pete Conrad, American astronaut (d. 1999)
• 2 June 1949 – Heather Couper, British astronomer
• 3 June 1659 – David Gregory, Scottish astronomer (d. 1708)
• 3 June 1923 – Igor Shafarevich, Russian mathematician
• 4 June 1704 – Benjamin Huntsman, English inventor and manufacturer (d. 1776)
• 4 June 1877 – Heinrich Wieland, German biochemist & Nobel laureate (d. 1957)
• 4 June 1916 – Robert F. Furchgott, American chemist & Nobel laureate (d. 2009)
• 4 June 1967 – Robert Shane Kimbrough, American astronaut
• 5 June 1760 – Johan Gadolin, Finnish scientist (d. 1852)
• 5 June 1819 – John Couch Adams, English astronomer (d. 1892)
• 5 June 1862 – Allvar Gullstrand, Swedish ophthalmologist Nobel laureate (d. 1930)
• 5 June 1900 – Dennis Gabor, Hungarian physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1979)
• 5 June 1965 – Michael E. Brown, American astronomer
• 13 June 1831 - James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist (d. 1879)

General images

The following are images from various physics-related articles on Wikipedia.

• 
  The Standard Model. (from History of physics)
• 
  A Newton's cradle, named after physicist Isaac Newton (from History of physics)
• 
  Gottfried Leibniz
  (1646–1716) (from History of physics)
• 
  Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040). (from History of physics)
• 
  Computer simulation of nanogears made of fullerene molecules. It is hoped that advances in nanoscience will lead to machines working on the molecular scale. (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated proton–proton collision. It decays almost immediately into two jets of hadrons and two electrons, visible as lines. (from History of physics)
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  A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor. Today some physicists are working to understand high-temperature superconductivity using the AdS/CFT correspondence. (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  James Clerk Maxwell
  (1831–1879) (from History of physics)
• 
  Ludwig Boltzmann
  (1844-1906) (from History of physics)
• 
  Christiaan Huygens
  (1629–1695) (from History of physics)
• 
  Michael Faraday
  (1791–1867) (from History of physics)
• 
  Alessandro Volta
  (1745–1827) (from History of physics)
• 
  The Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The inscriptions on the edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) display this number system being used by the Imperial Mauryas. (from History of physics)
• 
  Richard Feynman's Los Alamos ID badge (from History of physics)
• 
  The quantum Hall effect: Components of the Hall resistivity as a function of the external magnetic field (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  Einstein proposed that gravitation is a result of masses (or their equivalent energies) curving ("bending") the spacetime in which they exist, altering the paths they follow within it. (from History of physics)
• 
  Classical physics (Rayleigh–Jeans law, black line) failed to explain black-body radiation – the so-called ultraviolet catastrophe. The quantum description (Planck's law, colored lines) is said to be modern physics. (from Modern physics)
• 
  Werner Heisenberg
  (1901–1976) (from History of physics)
• 
  Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Johannes van der Waals with the helium liquefactor at Leiden in 1908 (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  Marie Skłodowska-Curie
  (1867–1934) She was awarded two Nobel prizes, Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911) (from History of physics)
• 
  Classical physics is usually concerned with everyday conditions: speeds are much lower than the speed of light, sizes are much greater than that of atoms, yet very small in astronomical terms. Modern physics, however, is concerned with high velocities, small distances, and very large energies. (from Modern physics)
• 
  A page from al-Khwārizmī's Algebra. (from History of physics)
• 
  A composite montage comparing Jupiter (lefthand side) and its four Galilean moons (top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto). (from History of physics)
• 
  A replica of the first point-contact transistor in Bell labs (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  Albert Einstein (1879–1955), photographed here in around 1905 (from History of physics)
• 
  Aristotle
  (384–322 BCE) (from History of physics)
• 
  René Descartes
  (1596–1650) (from History of physics)
• 
  Max Planck
  (1858–1947) (from History of physics)
• 
  The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is remembered for his development of a heliocentric model of the Solar System. (from History of physics)
• 
  Daniel Bernoulli
  (1700–1782) (from History of physics)
• 
  Sir Isaac Newton
  (1642–1727) (from History of physics)
• 
  Image of X-ray diffraction pattern from a protein crystal (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
  (1824–1907) (from History of physics)
• 
  Star maps by the 11th-century Chinese polymath Su Song are the oldest known woodblock-printed star maps to have survived to the present day. This example, dated 1092, employs the cylindrical equirectangular projection. (from History of physics)
• 
  The first Bose–Einstein condensate observed in a gas of ultracold rubidium atoms. The blue and white areas represent higher density. (from Condensed matter physics)
• 
  A Feynman diagram representing (left to right) the production of a photon (blue sine wave) from the annihilation of an electron and its complementary antiparticle, the positron. The photon becomes a quark–antiquark pair and a gluon (green spiral) is released. (from History of physics)
• 
  Chien-Shiung Wu worked on parity violation in 1956 and announced her results in January 1957. (from History of physics)
• 
  Galileo Galilei, early proponent of the modern scientific worldview and method
  (1564–1642) (from History of physics)
• 
  J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) discovered the electron and isotopy and also invented the mass spectrometer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906. (from History of physics)
• 
  The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, developer of ideas regarding fluid mechanics and buoyancy. (from History of physics)

Categories

Category puzzle

Fundamentals: Concepts in physics | Constants | Physical quantities | Units of measure | Mass | Length | Time | Space | Energy | Matter | Force | Gravity | Electricity | Magnetism | Waves

Basic physics: Mechanics | Electromagnetism | Statistical mechanics | Thermodynamics | Quantum mechanics | Theory of relativity | Optics | Acoustics

Specific fields: Acoustics | Astrophysics | Atomic physics | Molecular physics | Optical physics | Computational physics | Condensed matter physics | Nuclear physics | Particle physics | Plasma physics

Tools: Detectors | Interferometry | Measurement | Radiometry | Spectroscopy | Transducers

Background: Physicists | History of physics | Philosophy of physics | Physics education | Physics journals | Physics organizations

Other: Physics in fiction | Physics lists | Physics software | Physics stubs

Physics topics

Classical physics traditionally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics. The term Modern physics is normally used for fields which rely heavily on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. General and special relativity are usually considered to be part of modern physics as well.

Fundamental Concepts	Classical Physics	Modern Physics	Cross Discipline Topics
Continuum	Solid Mechanics	Fluid Mechanics	Geophysics
Motion	Classical Mechanics	Analytical mechanics	Mathematical Physics
Kinetics	Kinematics	Kinematic chain	Robotics
Matter	Classical states	Modern states	Nanotechnology
Energy	Chemical Physics	Plasma Physics	Materials Science
Cold	Cryophysics	Cryogenics	Superconductivity
Heat	Heat transfer	Transport Phenomena	Combustion
Entropy	Thermodynamics	Statistical mechanics	Phase transitions
Particle	Particulates	Particle physics	Particle accelerator
Antiparticle	Antimatter	Annihilation physics	Gamma ray
Waves	Oscillation	Quantum oscillation	Vibration
Gravity	Gravitation	Gravitational wave	Celestial mechanics
Vacuum	Pressure physics	Vacuum state physics	Quantum fluctuation
Random	Statistics	Stochastic process	Brownian motion
Spacetime	Special Relativity	General Relativity	Black holes
Quantum	Quantum mechanics	Quantum field theory	Quantum computing
Radiation	Radioactivity	Radioactive decay	Cosmic ray
Light	Optics	Quantum optics	Photonics
Electrons	Solid State	Condensed Matter	Symmetry breaking
Electricity	Electrical circuit	Electronics	Integrated circuit
Electromagnetism	Electrodynamics	Quantum Electrodynamics	Chemical Bonds
Strong interaction	Nuclear Physics	Quantum Chromodynamics	Quark model
Weak interaction	Atomic Physics	Electroweak theory	Radioactivity
Standard Model	Fundamental interaction	Grand Unified Theory	Higgs boson
Information	Information science	Quantum information	Holographic principle
Life	Biophysics	Quantum Biology	Astrobiology
Conscience	Neurophysics	Quantum mind	Quantum brain dynamics
Cosmos	Astrophysics	Cosmology	Observable universe
Cosmogony	Big Bang	Mathematical universe	Multiverse
Chaos	Chaos theory	Quantum chaos	Perturbation theory
Complexity	Dynamical system	Complex system	Emergence
Quantization	Canonical quantization	Loop quantum gravity	Spin foam
Unification	Quantum gravity	String theory	Theory of Everything

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