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Physics is the scientific 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. 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 branched into separate research endeavors. 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 technologies that have transformed modern 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...)

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Oganesson is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Og and atomic number 118. It was first synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow, Russia, by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. In December 2015, it was recognized as one of four new elements by the Joint Working Party of the international scientific bodies IUPAC and IUPAP. It was formally named on 28 November 2016. The name honors the nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, who played a leading role in the discovery of the heaviest elements in the periodic table.

Oganesson has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass of all known elements. On the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block element, a member of group 18 and the last member of period 7. Its only known isotope, oganesson-294, is highly radioactive, with a half-life of 0.7 ms and, as of 2025,^[update] only five atoms have been successfully produced. This has so far prevented any experimental studies of its chemistry. Because of relativistic effects, theoretical studies predict that it would be a solid at room temperature, and significantly reactive, unlike the other members of group 18 (the noble gases). (Full article...)

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... the mirage of astronomical objects is an optical phenomenon, which produces distorted or multiple images of astronomical objects such as the Sun, the Moon, the planets, bright stars and very bright comets

... that your watch would run slower when orbiting a black hole than it would on Earth?

... that homing pigeons wouldn't be able to navigate on Mercury because the planet has no magnetic field or atmosphere?

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Archimedes' screw, also called the Archimedean screw or screwpump, is a machine historically used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches. The screw pump is commonly attributed to Archimedes on the occasion of his visit to Egypt, but this tradition may reflect only that the apparatus was unknown to the Greeks before Hellenistic times and introduced in his lifetime by unknown Greek engineers. Some writers have suggested that the device may have been in use in Assyria some 350 years earlier.

Archimedes' screw was operated by hand and could raise water efficiently
An Archimedes' screw in Huseby south of Växjö Sweden
Archimedes' screw]
Roman screw used to dewater mines in Spain
Modern Archimedes' screws which have replaced some of the windmills used to drain the polders at Kinderdijk in the Netherlands
Archimedes' screw as a form of art by Tony Cragg at 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands

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Image 1

A NASA portrait of Levine

Joel S. Levine (born 1942) is an American planetary scientist, author, and research professor in applied science at the College of William & Mary, specializing in the atmospheres of the Moon, Earth, and Mars. He has worked as a senior research scientist at NASA, developing scientific models of the evolution of the Earth's early atmosphere, as well as creating models of the Martian atmosphere for use during the Viking 1 and 2 Mars Orbiter and Lander Missions, and was principal investigator and chief scientist of the proposed ARES Mars Airplane Mission. He also formed and led the "Charters of Freedom Research Team," a group of 12 NASA scientists who worked with the National Archive and Records Administration (NARA) to preserve the United States Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights when small white spots began appearing on the documents in 1988. Levine's past work also includes assisting in the design of the rescue vehicle that saved 33 Chilean miners in the 2010 Copiapó mining accident, as well as original research on the feasibility of the "nuclear winter" hypothesis, and the effects of uncontrolled fires on global warming.

Levine is married to Arlene Spielholz, a former NASA scientist who studied the psychological effects of astronauts spending long time periods in space, and has a daughter and grandson. (Full article...)
Image 2

Chien-Shiung Wu performing experiments

Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese: 吳健雄; pinyin: Wú Jiànxióng; Wade–Giles: Wu² Chien⁴-shiung²; May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of nuclear and particle physics. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. This discovery resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, while Wu herself was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Her expertise in experimental physics evoked comparisons to Marie Curie. Her nicknames include the "First Lady of Physics", the "Chinese Madame Curie" and the "Queen of Nuclear Research". (Full article...)
Image 3

Vice Admiral John T. Hayward

John Tucker "Chick" Hayward (15 November 1908 – 23 May 1999) was an American naval aviator during World War II. He helped develop one of the two atomic bombs that was dropped on Japan in the closing days of the war. Later, he was a pioneer in the development of nuclear propulsion, nuclear weapons, guidance systems for ground- and air-launched rockets, and underwater anti-submarine weapons. A former batboy for the New York Yankees, Hayward dropped out of high school and lied about his age to enlist in the United States Navy at age 16. He was subsequently admitted to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, from which he graduated 51st in his class of 1930. He volunteered for naval aviation.

During World War II, he served at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, where he was involved in an effort to improve aircraft instrumentation, notably the compass and altimeter. He attended the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, and studied nuclear physics. In June 1942, he assumed command of a new patrol bomber squadron, VB-106, equipped with PB4Y-1 Liberators, which he led in a daring raid on Wake Island, in the Solomon Islands campaign, and in the Southwest Pacific Area. Returning to the United States in 1944, he was posted to the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, California, where he joined the Manhattan Project, participating in Project Camel, the development of the non-nuclear components of the Fat Man bomb, and in its drop testing. (Full article...)
Image 4
Flash X-Ray images of the converging shock waves formed during a test of the high explosive lens system.

The RaLa Experiment, or RaLa, was a series of tests during and after the Manhattan Project designed to study the behavior of converging shock waves to achieve the spherical implosion necessary for compression of the plutonium pit of the nuclear weapon. The experiment used significant amounts of a short-lived radioisotope lanthanum-140, a potent source of gamma radiation; the RaLa is a contraction of Radioactive Lanthanum. The method was proposed by Robert Serber and developed by a team led by the Italian experimental physicist Bruno Rossi.

The tests were performed with 1⁄8 inch (3.2 mm) spheres of radioactive lanthanum, equal to about 100 curies (3.7 TBq) and later 1,000 Ci (37 TBq), located in the center of a simulated nuclear device. The explosive lenses were designed primarily using this series of tests. Some 254 tests were conducted between September 1944 and March 1962. In his history of the Los Alamos project, David Hawkins wrote: “RaLa became the most important single experiment affecting the final bomb design”. (Full article...)
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Robert Fox Bacher (August 31, 1905 – November 18, 2004) was an American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project. Born in Loudonville, Ohio, Bacher obtained his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, writing his 1930 doctoral thesis under the supervision of Samuel Goudsmit on the Zeeman effect of the hyperfine structure of atomic levels. After graduate work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he accepted a job at Columbia University. In 1935 he accepted an offer from Hans Bethe to work with him at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It was there that Bacher collaborated with Bethe on his book Nuclear Physics. A: Stationary States of Nuclei (1936), the first of three books that would become known as the "Bethe Bible".

In December 1940, Bacher joined the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, although he did not immediately cease his research at Cornell into the neutron cross section of cadmium. The Radiation Laboratory was organized into two sections, one for incoming radar signals, and one for outgoing radar signals. Bacher was appointed to handle the incoming signals section. Here he gained valuable experience in administration, coordinating not just the efforts of his scientists, but also those of General Electric and RCA. In 1942, Bacher was approached by Robert Oppenheimer to join the Manhattan Project at its new laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was at Bacher's insistence that Los Alamos became a civilian rather than a military laboratory. At Los Alamos, Bacher headed the project's P (Physics) Division, and later its G (Gadget) Division. Bacher worked closely with Oppenheimer, and the two men discussed the project's progress on a daily basis. (Full article...)
Image 6

Portrait by Christian Albrecht Jensen, 1840 (copy from Gottlieb Biermann, 1887)

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (German: Gauß [kaʁl ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɡaʊs] ; Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, geodesist, and physicist who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science. He was director of the Göttingen Observatory and professor of astronomy from 1807 until his death in 1855. He is widely considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.

While studying at the University of Göttingen, he propounded several mathematical theorems. Gauss completed his masterpieces Disquisitiones Arithmeticae and Theoria motus corporum coelestium as a private scholar. He gave the second and third complete proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra, made contributions to number theory, and developed the theories of binary and ternary quadratic forms. (Full article...)
Image 7
An extratropical cyclone near Iceland

In meteorology, a cyclone (/ˈsaɪ.kloʊn/) is a large air mass that rotates around a strong center of low atmospheric pressure, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as viewed from above (opposite to an anticyclone). Cyclones are characterized by inward-spiraling winds that rotate about a zone of low pressure. The largest low-pressure systems are polar vortices and extratropical cyclones of the largest scale (the synoptic scale). Warm-core cyclones such as tropical cyclones and subtropical cyclones also lie within the synoptic scale. Mesocyclones, tornadoes, and dust devils lie within the smaller mesoscale.

Upper level cyclones can exist without the presence of a surface low, and can pinch off from the base of the tropical upper tropospheric trough during the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere. Cyclones have also been seen on extraterrestrial planets, such as Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune. Cyclogenesis is the process of cyclone formation and intensification. Extratropical cyclones begin as waves in large regions of enhanced mid-latitude temperature contrasts called baroclinic zones. These zones contract and form weather fronts as the cyclonic circulation closes and intensifies. Later in their life cycle, extratropical cyclones occlude as cold air masses undercut the warmer air and become cold core systems. A cyclone's track is guided over the course of its 2 to 6 day life cycle by the steering flow of the subtropical jet stream. (Full article...)
Image 8

Bust of Pythagoras of Samos in the
Capitoline Museums, Rome

Pythagoras of Samos (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC), often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.

In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher ("lover of wisdom") and that he was the first to divide the globe into five climatic zones. Classical historians debate whether Pythagoras made these discoveries, and many of the accomplishments credited to him likely originated earlier or were made by his colleagues or successors. Some accounts mention that the philosophy associated with Pythagoras was related to mathematics and that numbers were important, but it is debated to what extent, if at all, he actually contributed to mathematics or natural philosophy. (Full article...)
Image 9
Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and electrons. More generally, the subject deals with condensed phases of matter: systems of many constituents with strong interactions among them. More exotic condensed phases include the superconducting phase exhibited by certain materials at extremely low cryogenic temperatures, the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on crystal lattices of atoms, the Bose–Einstein condensates found in ultracold atomic systems, and liquid crystals. Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by experiments to measure various material properties, and by applying the physical laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, and other physics theories to develop mathematical models and predict the properties of extremely large groups of atoms.

The diversity of systems and phenomena available for study makes condensed matter physics the most active field of contemporary physics: one third of all American physicists self-identify as condensed matter physicists, and the Division of Condensed Matter Physics is the largest division of the American Physical Society. These include solid state and soft matter physicists, who study quantum and non-quantum physical properties of matter respectively. Both types study a great range of materials, providing many research, funding and employment opportunities. The field overlaps with chemistry, materials science, engineering and nanotechnology, and relates closely to atomic physics and biophysics. The theoretical physics of condensed matter shares important concepts and methods with that of particle physics and nuclear physics. (Full article...)
Image 10
Lightning (pictured) and urban lighting are some of the most dramatic effects of electricity

Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwell's equations. Common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.

The presence of either a positive or negative electric charge produces an electric field. The motion of electric charges is an electric current and produces a magnetic field. In most applications, Coulomb's law determines the force acting on an electric charge. Electric potential is the work done to move an electric charge from one point to another within an electric field, typically measured in volts. (Full article...)
Image 11
A depiction of the ultrasound signals emitted by a bat, and the echo from a nearby object

Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is a biological active sonar used by several animal groups, both in the air and underwater. Echolocating animals emit calls and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects. Echolocation is used for navigation, foraging, and hunting prey.

Echolocation calls can be frequency modulated (FM, varying in pitch during the call) or constant frequency (CF). FM offers precise range discrimination to localize the prey, at the cost of reduced operational range. CF allows both the prey's velocity and its movements to be detected by means of the Doppler effect. FM may be best for close, cluttered environments, while CF may be better in open environments or for hunting while perched. (Full article...)
Image 12

Amedeo Avogadro, the constant's namesake

The Avogadro constant, commonly denoted $N A$ or $L$ , is an SI defining constant with an exact value of 6.02214076×10²³ mol⁻¹ (reciprocal moles). It is this defined number of constituent particles (usually molecules, atoms, ions, or ion pairs—in general, entities) per mole (SI unit) and used as a normalization factor in relating the amount of substance, n(X), in a sample of a substance X to the corresponding number of entities, N(X): n(X) = N(X)(1/N_A), an aggregate of N(X) reciprocal Avogadro constants. By setting N(X) = 1, a reciprocal Avogadro constant is seen to be equal to one entity, which means that n(X) is more easily interpreted as an aggregate of N(X) entities. In the SI dimensional analysis of measurement units, the dimension of the Avogadro constant is the reciprocal of amount of substance, denoted N⁻¹. The Avogadro number, sometimes denoted $N 0$ , is the numeric value of the Avogadro constant (i.e., without a unit), namely the dimensionless number 6.02214076×10²³; the value chosen based on the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 in alignment with the historical definition of a mole. The constant is named after the Italian physicist and chemist Amedeo Avogadro.

The Avogadro constant $N A$ is also the factor that converts the average mass ( $m$ ) of one particle, in grams, to the molar mass ( $M$ ) of the substance, in grams per mole (g/mol). That is, $M=m\cdot N_{A}$ . Historically, this was precisely true, but since the constant's 2019 redefinition, this relation is now non-exact. (Full article...)
Image 13

Jackson in 1979

Mary Jackson (née Winston; April 9, 1921 – February 11, 2005) was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. In 1958, after taking engineering classes, she became NASA's first black female engineer.

After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. She realized she could not earn further promotions without becoming a supervisor. She accepted a demotion to become a manager of both the Federal Women's Program, in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering, and mathematics careers. (Full article...)
$Image 14 Coutard in 1937 Henri Coutard (27 August 1876 – 16 March 1950) was a French radiation therapist. He is known for his studies of radiation therapy for the treatment of laryngeal cancer and the development of the "protracted-fractional method" of radiation dosing. Born in Marolles-les-Braults in the French department of Sarthe, Coutard attended medical school at University of Paris and graduated in 1902. He served in the French Army and lived for several years in the Jura Mountains before returning to Paris to study the medical applications of radium. During World War I, he worked in one of the radiological ambulance units overseen by the Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie. He became the chief of the X-ray department at the Radium Institute of the University of Paris in 1919, working closely with Claudius Regaud and other scientists. Coutard's early work demonstrating the efficacy of radiating patients with laryngeal cancer led to the adoption of radiation therapy as a primary course of cancer treatment. The protracted-fractional method consisted of long durations of radiation applied over several weeks. (Full article...)$

Image 14

Coutard in 1937

Henri Coutard (27 August 1876 – 16 March 1950) was a French radiation therapist. He is known for his studies of radiation therapy for the treatment of laryngeal cancer and the development of the "protracted-fractional method" of radiation dosing.

Born in Marolles-les-Braults in the French department of Sarthe, Coutard attended medical school at University of Paris and graduated in 1902. He served in the French Army and lived for several years in the Jura Mountains before returning to Paris to study the medical applications of radium. During World War I, he worked in one of the radiological ambulance units overseen by the Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie. He became the chief of the X-ray department at the Radium Institute of the University of Paris in 1919, working closely with Claudius Regaud and other scientists. Coutard's early work demonstrating the efficacy of radiating patients with laryngeal cancer led to the adoption of radiation therapy as a primary course of cancer treatment. The protracted-fractional method consisted of long durations of radiation applied over several weeks. (Full article...)
Image 15

Vulpecula constellation, with the position of PSR B1937+21 marked in red.

PSR B1937+21 is a pulsar located in the constellation Vulpecula a few degrees in the sky away from the first discovered pulsar, PSR B1919+21. The name PSR B1937+21 is derived from the word "pulsar" and the declination and right ascension at which it is located, with the "B" indicating that the coordinates are for the 1950.0 epoch. PSR B1937+21 was discovered in 1982 by Don Backer, Shri Kulkarni, Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss.

It is the first discovered millisecond pulsar, with a rotational period of 1.557708 milliseconds, meaning it completes almost 642 rotations per second. This period was far shorter than astronomers considered pulsars capable of reaching, and led to the suggestion that pulsars can be spun-up by accreting mass from a companion. (Full article...)

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February anniversaries

15 February 1564 – Galileo Galilei's birthday
18 February 1745 – Alessandro Volta's birthday
15 February 1786 – Cat's Eye Nebula discovered
18 February 1838 – Ernst Mach's birthday
11 February 1847 – Thomas Edison's birthday
23 February 1855 – Carl Friedrich Gauss's death
22 February 1875 – Heinrich Hertz's birthday
28 February 1901 – Linus Pauling's birthday
18 February 1967 – J. Robert Oppenheimer's death
13 February 1910 – William Shockley's birthday
15 February 1988 – Richard Feynman died
28 February 2020 – Freeman Dyson's death

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General images

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

Image 1James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) (from History of physics)
Image 2Marie Skłodowska-Curie
(1867–1934) was awarded two Nobel prizes, Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911) (from History of physics)
Image 3The quantum Hall effect: Components of the Hall resistivity as a function of the external magnetic field (from Condensed matter physics)
Image 4René Descartes (1596–1650) (from History of physics)
Image 5Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040). (from History of physics)
Image 6Michael Faraday (1791–1867) (from History of physics)
Image 7Star 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 cylindricalequirectangular projection. (from History of physics)
Image 8Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) (from History of physics)
Image 9J. 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)
Image 10Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) (from History of physics)
Image 11Johannes Kepler.(1571–1630) (from History of physics)
$Image 12Image of X-ray diffraction pattern from a protein crystal (from Condensed matter physics)$

Image 12Image of X-ray diffraction pattern from a protein crystal (from Condensed matter physics)
Image 13The 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)
Image 14Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) (from History of physics)
Image 15Max Planck (1858–1947) (from History of physics)
Image 16A 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)
Image 17Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Johannes van der Waals with the helium liquefactor at Leiden in 1908 (from Condensed matter physics)
Image 18The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, developer of ideas regarding fluid mechanics and buoyancy. (from History of physics)
Image 19Aristotle (384–322 BCE) (from History of physics)
Image 20A page from al-Khwārizmī's Algebra. (from History of physics)
Image 21Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) (from History of physics)
Image 22A Newton's cradle, named after physicist Isaac Newton (from History of physics)
Image 23Galileo Galilei, early proponent of the modern scientific worldview and method (1564–1642) (from History of physics)
Image 24One 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)
Image 25A composite montage comparing Jupiter (lefthand side) and its four Galilean moons (top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto) (from History of physics)
Image 26An artist's rendition of Kepler-62f, a potentially habitable exoplanet discovered using data transmitted by the Kepler space telescope, named after Kepler. (from History of physics)
Image 27Chien-Shiung Wu worked on parity violation in 1956 and announced her results in January 1957. (from History of physics)
Image 28Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) (from History of physics)
Image 29A 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)
Image 30Richard Feynman's Los Alamos ID badge (from History of physics)
Image 31Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) (from History of physics)
Image 32The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is remembered for his development of a heliocentric model of the Solar System. (from History of physics)
Image 33Albert Einstein (1879–1955), photographed here in around 1905 (from History of physics)
Image 34Computer 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)
Image 35The Standard Model (from History of physics)
Image 36Classical 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)
Image 37Einstein 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)
Image 38The first Bose–Einstein condensate observed in a gas of ultracold rubidium atoms. The blue and white areas represent higher density. (from Condensed matter physics)
Image 39Classical 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)
Image 40William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
(1824–1907) (from History of physics)
Image 41Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) (from History of physics)
Image 42A replica of the first point-contact transistor in Bell labs (from Condensed matter physics)
Image 43Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) (from History of physics)

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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