D_Archer wrote:
Science is not math. Science is observation first, so a picture is the first language of science. Science is also measurement, after measurement you get data, data is a language of science. Science is also experiment, an experimental result is the language of science. See, you can do science without any math.
Wrong, wrong wrong. You cannot do physics without maths. Physics is a quantified description of the world and its language is mathematics. That is the nature of physics. If you describe the world without maths, then that's poetry, or art, or journalism, or religion, or science fiction, or stamp collecting. It ain't physics. Take the most elementary subject in an undergraduate physics course, the physics of simple harmonic motion. This is foundational for a huge range of more advanced topics.
How do you describe the motion of a pendulum in a way that is predictive? "I looked at it and it went to and fro about once a second" doesn't cut the mustard. The simplest physics, the simple harmonic motion of a mass on a spring is described by a function that plots the position of mass over time. And that position turns out to be given by a sinusoidal relationship (where a sinusoid is a trigonometric function derived from the ratio of sides of triangles with different angles). I have expressed it in words but it is mathematical nevertheless: x(t) = a cos (wt) where a is the amplitude of the motion and w is a constant which depends on the weight of the mass and the spring constant (w
2 = k/m where k is the spring constantband m is the mass). You can derive this expression from measuring a large number of different masses on different springs, but you can also derive it from Newton's laws (describing the relationship between force and acceleration) and Hooke's law (describing the tension in a spring as a function of extension) by setting up and solving a second order linear differential equation. The expression enables you to predict the position at any time of any mass and any spring acting under gravity given the initial conditions. The description of the simplest physical system in physics, a simple harmonic oscilllator, is mathematical. But there's more. If you know the values of the constants a and w for the position of the spring as a function of time you can derive the velocity and acceleration at any time by simple calculus. And there's more - knowing a and w, you can calculate the total energy of the system at any time, and you can partition that energy between potential and kinetic energy as a function of time. if you don't do calculus you don't understand the simplest physical system there is, a simple harmonic oscillator. You can describe the simple mathematics of a simple harmonic oscillator using words, but that's just an inefficient notation. It's still maths.
You go wrong at 1), an experiment is done first, the results can later be modeled (and/or put into a theory), described in math, diagrams, just plain English. When the theory is correct it may or may not be predictive and you could use it as a basis for other experiments, but it does not come first. Also before someone does an experiment one first uses intuitive thinking to come up with the experiment in the first place.
Who are you, knowing no physics, to prescibe how physics is done? Physics is a dialogue between theory and experiment. Sometimes the hypothesis comes first, sometimes the experiment, sometimes it's hard to tell what comes first, so tightly integrated are the experiments and the hypotheses. You think the experiment that detected the Higgs boson came before the hypothesis?
You can analyze data as a person and intuit many things without math.
But that isn't physics - it's divining.
I would say that only mathematicians would prefer math, not real physicists. Math is a tool, it is not any more capable in theory building than a language is.
Then you don't know any actual physicists. I don't know a single physicist, and I personally know hundreds, who would disagree with the statement that mathematics is the language of physics.
Let's turn this around. Can you cite any subject in physics which can be understood without understanding its mathematical theory?
ps. i think the real physics of E/M need more than just ions and electrons, we need a subfield (ie photons) to explain it all and maybe more....
There you go - complete nonsense. What in the name of Beelzebub is "sub-field"? Pure word salad and a complete waste of bandwidth.
Oh, and EM theory isn't just about ions and electrons, which you would know if you had the faintest idea about it. You don't even realise that Maxwell's theory
predicts electromagnetic waves and the speed of light. The phenomenon of light and many of its characteristics just fall out of the theory. Isn't that beautiful? As for photons, and how they relate to electromagnetic waves, you have to understand quantum theory, another one of those pesky mathematical theories.
Your dissmissal of the importance of maths in physics is one of the reasons that you guys will never be taken seriously.
"Every single ion is going to start cooling off instantly as far as I know…If you're mixing kinetic energy in there somehow, you'll need to explain exactly how you're defining 'temperature'" - Mozina