Musings on Physics and Education

By C. Marletto

At birth, we set out on a journey to understand the Universe. As we orbit around the sun, we sense, feel, taste, and observe the vast collection of phenomena around us. In early childhood, this exploration is natural and immediate to us, like breathing, eating and sleeping. Along the way we gather many new tools — keys to access further levels of understanding. As new-borns, we can engage with the world to some extent, but still minimally: our senses have to develop further; our brain has to expand and generate novel connections; our language and thinking skills have yet to emerge. Then we go through several milestones, such as the first time we can smile back at our parents, the first words, the first steps, and so on. As toddlerhood sets in, we start speaking one (or more) languages. We learn to sing, play, amuse and be amused, yell, say ‘yes’ and ‘no’. We learn about how to tell that an object is larger than another; how to balance when we trip on an obstacle; how to stand back up after a fall, and go back to walking. At some later point, we learn about drawing and art, numbers and shapes.

It is remarkable that, especially in early childhood, we traverse this vast and far-reaching learning playfully. We seek delight by expanding the mind to appreciate more and more of the world. This process of intellectual growth is not without its problems: mistakes do occur along the way, but instead of being discouraged or ashamed by them, we quickly learn from them and move forward towards new concepts, new ideas, and new shores.

That seamless and effortless learning gradually becomes more laboured as the years go by. Learning eventually becomes a chore, not a delight; in fact, it has to be enforced via a set of rewards and punishments; fences and boundaries proliferate, making it scary and challenging to tackle the study of particular topics. For most children, this transition is marked by the start of formal education and entry into the school system. There are exceptions – some lucky pupils encounter extraordinary teachers, who are knowledgeable, inspirational, compassionate, and delightfully humane; this usually enhances their passion for learning. But such cases are rare.

While most subjects, as presented in traditional schooling, tend to appear unappealing or hard to learn, some subjects are notoriously considered harder to conquer than others. The sciences, in particular, have a terrible reputation. The fences erected around these subjects are particularly thorny and menacing. Students can almost sense the approaching of troubles as they hear the first few lessons on these topics. Even when the students are successful at solving problems and passing exams, they may be less fond of these subjects, particularly when compared to others, such as Literature, Arts, or Music.

What is the reason for this endemic lack of affection? Just like some musical instruments have a more immediate entry to the level at which one can be playful and enjoy oneself — think, for instance, of learning the piano versus learning the guitar, which requires many more mechanical skills; so in the case of science it is harder to learn its language (mathematics) to the degree that allows one to have fun. Instead, given that we naturally have access to hearing and vision, it is far easier to enjoy a good drawing, a beautiful painting or a piece of music. Likewise, children engage with learning at least one language in their early years, so they do not have to overcome an extra language barrier when they approach a good story or a piece of literature. With mathematics, one needs to overcome a much stronger language barrier.

There is, however, a more profound problem. You can easily see the magic when an artist, say, draws from scratch a beautiful tiger on a piece of canvas, almost bringing to life a piece of inanimate matter; you can also immediately sense the power of a beautifully executed piece of music; or be hooked in by a good story. But who gets drawn in when reading a chemical reaction, an equation, or a mathematical theorem? The issue here is the lack of emphasis on what makes the sciences fun. It is challenging to see why they are interesting and beautiful without a proper introduction; an introduction that, in fact, may never occur during childhood. When children first approach the sciences, they are typically suspicious or bored, so it is no surprise that many end up estranged from those subjects.

Physics, the subject I love the most, has one of the worst reputations. This comes to me as a surprise, because in fact physics is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human intellectual enterprise. In reality, physics is very different from how it is featured in traditional education.

The best way to understand the true essence of physics is to evoke how the ancient Greeks thought about it. With the word physics (‘Τά Φυσικά’) they intended the study of nature, of all things in the Universe, known and yet to be known.

This meaning still gets very close to the spirit of the modern physics enterprise. Physics aims to understand how the Universe works. What makes it tick. It is the most subtle and refined tool to dissect reality and make it understandable. I am not just talking about explaining the so-called microscopic world, which consists of elementary particles, interactions, and spacetime. Physics explains much of the stuff existing at our (macroscopic) scale: from computers to smartphones, to the Internet, to the workings of our brains when we think. It does so by finding the unifying explanations for those phenomena and then expressing them as laws. The laws of physics are the basic rules that tell matter, space, and time how to behave. They govern everything, from the elementary particles to the chemistry fuelling life and our thinking. Without knowledge of the physical laws, the world looks one way. Once you know the laws of physics, you can see much more. Knowing the physical laws makes you reach a much deeper level of engagement with the world — like a higher state of enlightenment.

The physicist R. Feynman wrote a remarkable passage about how the worldview provided by the laws of physics gives us a deeper appreciation of the Universe. He insists that physics does not subtract from the enjoyment but adds to it. Feynman uses a flower as an example, but one can use any other object of beauty in our surroundings. The sea waves, a grain of sand, the light beaming through a prism, the rainbow, a waterfall. Zooming in into their workings, down to the size of an atom and beyond, and finding how they are all connected by unifying laws, is an experience that resembles an epiphany. Imagine looking at a mechanical clock, one of those metal clocks made of cogs and gears all working together to produce a neat ticking sound while the hands advance rhythmically round and round, keeping time. One way to enjoy the clock is to notice the beauty of the manufacturing – for instance, the shape of the hands and the numbers painted around the clock. Then, if we pay more attention to the detail, we may be struck by the complexity of the design — how all cogs fit into one another, producing a seamless motion that propels the hands of the clock. Then, we can appreciate the regularity of the ticking sound. And so on. Each of these levels gives us a fuller experience of the clock. Physics indeed adds to this: it tells us how the ticking sound propagates from the clock to our ears, how the motion of the cogs and hands must unfold in time, and how much energy is required to wind up the clock once it has run out of charge; how it’s all made by atomic particles strung together by microscopic, invisible interactions.

If physics really provides such powerful and far-reaching account about the Universe and how we fit in it, why is it rarely presented as such in school? The answer is complex. A considerable part of the reason is that school aims to optimise certain parameters (the ability to pass standardised texts, covering pre-defined curricula, etc.) that have nothing to do with presenting a given subject in its best form. So, unless a teacher happens to be particularly enlightened, the most beautiful features of the subject rarely shine through, and they are kept as secrets. This is a tragedy because, in this way, people of all ages keep missing out on some true beauty. Conventional wisdom tells us that physics is far from anything that can be interesting or useful to understand the Universe. In textbook presentations, physics appears like a set of mechanical rules to solve parochial problems about, say, inclined planes and falling bodies. There seems to be little creativity involved in it: it all looks like a repetitive exercise. It is paradoxical that people who do physics as their profession, like me, think that the opposite is true. Physics is dazzling and enchanting; it also has a deep, intimate connection with the fabric of reality. By the study of it, you can, in fact, move much closer to understanding the Universe and our place within it.

This leads us to the two main reasons why we should care about physics in the first place — which is my final thought for this piece. One reason is that physics is fun. Simply put, it adds much delight to our lives. There are many forms of enjoyment and pleasure in the world; the joy that comes through the mind is the most durable, portable, and resilient. It does not depend on the state of your body — you can enjoy a song, a work of art, or a novel, whether or not you are in good health, irrespective of your age and physical form. It is portable – once you have savoured it, you have it in you for as long as you live. It is resilient because you can learn how to cultivate it irrespective of your surroundings — even in the darkest corners of one’s life, the mind’s delight carries the light through. It is, therefore, a huge advantage to know that physics is an intellectual delight which is often hidden away from most. The sooner we realise this, the richer our life experience can be. This particular form of intellectual delight also constitutes a potent remedy against terror, fear, and angst. For physics (like the rest of the sciences) dispels fear (which stems from ignorance) and infuses reality with brightness, clarity of understanding, and wonder. The other reason is that understanding the cosmos is essential to our species’ perpetuation. We live in a universe that is not tailor-made for us — we need to be continuously focused to find and solve problems that may become existential threats to humanity. Understanding the laws of physics gives us access to technologies and insights that have made, and may make, the difference between good and bad quality of life, between life and death, and between our species’ extinction and survival.