Definition of Physics

Physics

The science of nature, or of natural objects; that branch of science which treats of the laws and properties of matter, and the forces acting upon it; especially, that department of natural science which treats of the causes (as gravitation, heat, light, magnetism, electricity, etc.) that modify the general properties of bodies; natural philosophy.

Related Definitions:

Acting, And, As, Bodies, Branch, Department, Electricity, Especially, General, Gravitation, Heat, It, Light, Magnetism, Matter, Modify, Natural, Nature, Of, Or, Philosophy, Properties, Science, That, The, Upon, Which

Physics Quotations

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
Albert Einstein

Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don't have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don't have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh.
Steve Jobs

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.
Richard Dawkins

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.
Gertrude Stein

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
H. L. Mencken

Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.
Dave Barry

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.
Bertrand Russell

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
Bertrand Russell

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
Michel de Montaigne

When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world's formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.
Martin Heidegger

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.
Niels Bohr

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.
Niels Bohr

Indubitably, magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.
Aleister Crowley

Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.
Thomas Huxley

The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
Paul Dirac

The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.
Paul Dirac

I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition.
Paul Dirac

My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.
Sally Ride

There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
J. Robert Oppenheimer

If one looks at the different problems of the integral calculus which arise naturally when one wishes to go deep into the different parts of physics, it is impossible not to be struck by the analogies existing.
Henri Poincare

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics.
Maimonides

You will certainly not doubt the necessity of studying astronomy and physics, if you are desirous of comprehending the relation between the world and Providence as it is in reality, and not according to imagination.
Maimonides

Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.
Edward Teller

A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.
Erwin Schrodinger

The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.
Erwin Schrodinger

Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.
Erwin Schrodinger

Nevertheless, all of us who work in quantum physics believe in the reality of a quantum world, and the reality of quantum entities like protons and electrons.
John Polkinghorne

So Whitehead's metaphysics doesn't fit very well on to physics as we understand the process of the world.
John Polkinghorne

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.
Pope Paul VI

We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.
Jeremy Rifkin

More Physics Quotations

Physics Translations

physics in Dutch is natuurkunde, fysica
physics in Finnish is fysiikka
physics in French is physique
physics in German is Physik
physics in Hungarian is fizika
physics in Italian is fisica
physics in Swedish is fysik

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