What made you begin to love physics?

[Azael]

What made you begin to love physics??

For me it happened when I was 8 years old. I was a stubborn kid and for some reason I had decided that I would never learn to read since it pointless to be able to read
christmas time came and one of my sisters bought me a astronomy book as christmas gift and I was imidietly hooked. I was fascinated by it all, black holes, big bang, neutron stars, supernova, galaxies. I couldn't believe stuff like that existed. Since my family got sic of reading from the book to me I forced myself to learn to read as quickly as possible and started going to the library for astronomy books
Right there and then I decided that when I grow up I want to be a astronomer.

My passion for physics expanded and from grade 3-7 I read everything I could that wasnt out of my reach mathematicly. But then I got into wrestling and after that bodybuilding and the passion disapered for a few years. the extremely dull and boring high school physics didnt make things better. Hadnt I know that there is more fascinating stuff out there I probably would have been like every other high school kid that hates physics.

Now this last year as I started my second year at university studying physics my passion is back stronger then ever and I hope it will never leave me again:!)

So let's hear your story about how you started to love physics.

 

[franznietzsche]

When i was six, maybe seven years old i got a small 60 mm refractor telescope as a christmas or birthday present (i forget which brand, it was one from a binocular company, not a good scope by any means, but at six years old i didn't know or care). I loved it. It could really only make out the moon and planets, but that was enough for me. I was hooked. I had it out all the time. Then one time on a camping trip, the plastic tube overheated and warped in the car . I was heartbroken. Pretty much from the time i got that scope on, I had decided I was going to be a scientist. Exactly what I was going to study changed over the years, Astronomy, chemistry, genetics, back to astronomy, and finally physics.

 

[Mindscrape]

I've always liked how physics seems to tackle all of the universe's most esoteric secrets.

 

[tribdog]

it was the first F word that didn't start with an F that I knew

 

[Pengwuino]

I heard physicists were hot

 

[mattmns]

When I took physics in high school it was real fun applying math to figure real world (well not real, but more than usual) stuff out. How often am I pushing a block up a hill (neglecting friction of course) and don't know what force I need to use in order to reach the top?

I am no longer in love with physics actually. I started out as a physics major in college, but my first semester my physics teacher was bad, and my math teacher was awesome, so I switched

 

[Azael]

I heard physicists were hot

Must have been a good liar to fool you into that

 

[SizarieldoR]

Aaaah...

The electronic toys I liked to break to see what's inside, the books about astronomy, Discovery Channel (about how machines work), radiation (yep, that was what I thought of as "magic". And I still do ), allll those wonderful shiny gadgets, which Science gave us... And of course, the disgust from the ignorant piety of my (Christian) relatives, both narrow-minded, and disliking all science. Physics was somewhat like going to a better world of truth equality...

 

[ZapperZ]

I heard physicists were hot

No, we're not.

However, we do have charmed quarks.

Zz.

 

[Gokul43201]

I went into physics seeking power, hot chicks and money !

 

[ZapperZ]

I went into physics seeking power, hot chicks and money !

.. and so far, you have 1 out of 3.

There's still plenty of time...

:)

Zz.

 

[Hootenanny]

However, we do have charmed quarks.

I'm not even going to comment...

 

[scott1]

When I was about six years old I got interested in secience from a 1st grade experment about insects.Also when I was six years old I became intersted in astromany/space because I saw star wars.When I was about 8-9 years old I got intersted in physics.That's when I got into astorphysiscs.

 

[fourier jr]

in grade 2 (age 6 or 7 i guess) i had charlie brown's 'cyclopedia & i read every volume line-by-line, cover-to-cover many times over, especially the volume on astromony. in grade 5 (age 11) i made my first mathematical discovery though, after looking at the perspecive letters drawn by a new kid in my class. i had a picture in my head of a staircase that went up, turned 90 degrees, up some more, turned 90 degrees again, up some more, turned 90 degrees again, went up again... and joined up with itself right back where it started! i didn't think it made much sense but other than that i didn't think much of it until many years later when i saw it in mc escher's drawing "ascending & descending" & thought that was cool. i also found out that it even has a name, penrose's impossible staircase. it wasn't until i read (in october/november) in one of the two pop-culture books on the riemann hypothesis (can't remember which one, i read both) that many people who became famous mathematicians made similar discoveries. it's too common to call them all prodigies but the author of the book said it was very strange how so many teenagers made such discoveries (one mathematician interviewed for the book discovered lagrange's interpolation theorem when he was 15 for example) with no real training in math. no more than in any other subject anyway. reading that book was really 'validating' and a real inspiration. i had always liked science but since november it has been a real emergency to get back into a math class asap where i know i belong now.

 

[Beeza]

I didn't become interested in any type of science or math (never even passed biology or algebra 1 in high school)until I spent a year roofing after high school. That pretty much killed my desire to spend the rest of my life doing back breaking manual labor. I started community college for Heating and Air Conditioning. I liked doing that kind of work, but the textbooks always hinted and breezed over the reasons why things in those systems behaved the way they did. So, I wanted to know why!
Then, I met a professor that took me under her wing and let me into a trigonometry class that i wasn't qualified for. She helped me make up for what I didn't do in high school, and and tutored me through the prerequisite classes, so I could skip them and move more quickly into interesting material. Since then, I love learning physics and math and have moved on to a university.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Constipations

 

[DukeofDuke]

Because other subjects were stupid, or boring.

Only Physics can play with Nature Herself.
I started liking physics the same time I realized mathematics was very calming to my hyperactive mind haha. About age ten, I believe (back then I only had random, and pretty stupid, thought experiments).

 

[Sonoran Lion]

It would have been when I was in my high school physics class during a lab involving building a bridge out of toothpicks. My interest was sparked when I first began wondering what or why my bridge didn't break, where as the other bridges broke under the weight added to them.

 

[arunma]

I watched too much Star Trek as a kid...

...and now, physics has taken away my ability to watch Star Trek at all. Damn you, physics.

 

[drizzle]

I use to hate physics! hate it hate it hate it


however, I start to study physics hard just for one reason and one only; to challenge my mind. now, I’m in love with it and can't live without physics

 

[Cyrus]

I watched too much Star Trek as a kid...

...and now, physics has taken away my ability to watch Star Trek at all. Damn you, physics.

I disagree, even though I know what they say in star trek is wrong, it's such a good show I can overlook it! Of course, I mean TKNG. I think it's because they are very subtle in being wrong, as opposed to some shows that are just blatantly retarded.

 

[Pythagorean]

well, I just always loved physics... it was in my nature.

But I didn't realize what physics was until I read the Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav. Of course, I haven't read such "filth" since getting my Bachelor's. I wonder what I'd think of that book nowadays.

 

[BobG]

When I was 8, the next door neighbor was a 10-year-old girl that seemed to always need a partner for the strangest things. She was obnoxious, and the kind of girl you try to avoid, but I couldn't resist the weird things she wanted to do.

One day we dissected a live toad. You could see its heart beating. You could see its lungs expanding and contracting (this was especially interesting, considering its chest was sliced open). At that moment, I knew what I wanted to be.

Then the damn toad flipped over and hopped off the table. It probably would have gotten away, but its intestines got caught on a twig and started trailing behind the toad. The intestines kept getting caught on stuff, slowing the toad down.

Not that we knew what to do with the toad once we caught up with it. Original plan was to sew the toad up and send it off on its merry way. Stuffing all those intestines back inside looked like a pretty insurmountable problem.

Finally, her big brother came along and chewed us out really good for torturing a toad. Then he got his beebee gun so he could put the poor toad out of its misery. The next lesson we learned was that it's pretty hard to kill a toad. He had to put at least 30 or 40 shots into that toad before it finally seemed to die of natural causes (curiosity is natural, isn't it?).

The whole end to that experiment was pretty traumatic, so I started drinking and smoking cigarettes out on the railroad tracks and making bets about how far a person could pee. Turns out a little physics can give a person a bit of an edge in those sorts of bets.

 

[czelaya]

I realized that I wanted to study physics at around 21 after I graduated with my degree in Molecular Biology. I was in the book store and I picked up a book on Quantum Mechanics by Shankar. Flipping through the pages I thought I could never understand the mathematics or quantum mechanics... this was way out of my level of comprehension. I thought it would be impossible but I wanted to try anyway. I pondered what all the symbols meant. My goal was only to understand that book and nothing more. So, I started taking more mathematics courses (Calculus series) and finally decided to get a second degree in Chemistry (physical & theoretical). Once I was introduced to Physical Chemistry. I was hooked. Once I graduated with my degree chemistry I applied to graduate school in Theoretical Chemistry. The course work consisted of class work from the Math, Physics, and Chemistry dept. First time I ever felt passionate about my studies.

The Shankar book was required for two semesters of Quantum Mechanics in graduate school.

I have a new book that I want to study, QFT by Mark Srednicki. Hopefully, when I receive my Ph.D I will pursue research in applications of QFT and differential geometry for molecular modeling and analysis.