Why studying physics is a good idea?

Not so much, The one who chose the physics career was seen as a ‘rarito’, as a person who had a crazy desire to spend many hours “locked up in a room, in the light of a flexo and between formulas”Admits Alberto Corbi, director of Physics degree of the International University of La Rioja (Unir). He, a good student, had to overcome the resistance of his parents, that they preferred, like everyone at that time, that their children, if they were good at science, did an engineering, who had “more future” – there are predictions are very little scientific – and, although this was not so open, pestic. But the recordings have changed! Now, many parents who could not take their children’s physics in their heads, with some surprise, because their descendants go to the cinema. They are worn out in many companies of a completely different design. «Yes, it has a way out, you just have to see the cutting nut to come in when I made it worth to you with a 5 peeled; Now, however, they ask you what would be equivalent to a 9 high of that earlier ”, Corbi indicates. These are the reasons why this race is in its Golden Age.

Sounds slogan, but no. What can an expert in the weather, a specialist in the ‘map’ of the Covid, a portent of renewable energetic, a material resistance adviser, an X -ray professional, diagraming or computer science? Well, they can all be physical. “For example, I studied the dream of people with Alzheimer’s,” Add Corbi. «Physics is enormously interdisciplinary. A basic science for everything, the prelude that opens many doors. It forms your head! And it is not because we study all aspects where it can be applied, it is because it gives you some solid bases – placing models, contrasting them … – that you serve for very different fields ». And the stereotypical and the classic image of the lonely person who makes accounts in folios, who struggles strikingly to unravel a mystery or explain a formula? Are not those library mice that dive into unintelligible concepts for the common mortals and whose application can be explained almost impossible? Corbi laughs. “There are still men and women who are committed to a more experimental aspect, yes, to the ‘Flexo’,” he admits.

But if there is something that, in his opinion, explains the success of this career “before” previously indicated “, it has been” “very good scientific spread in the past six or seven years” that happens to be physical. “” At least this is my “theory to walk around the house,” “glides. Podcast, YouTube channels, distribution events and scientific monologues are the ‘culprit’ of “after approached physics to ‘vulgar’» »»Reaction nice. And some of this spread, with great communication skills, have disappeared from cinema. “For example, there is Javier Santaolalla … or the podcast ‘Coffebreak’, number one in scientific distribution in Spanish,” he mentions. They all achieved which traditional lessons did not know how to convey: the passion for science, the importance of understanding it in context, with his anecdotes, the historical framework and its applications in real life. That is, they have made it accessible and attractive. And his work has not been in bucket, Many ‘millennials’ are addicted. “We return to the cutting tickets, we just have to see what they have uploaded, there are more and more young people who are attracted to physics,” says Corbi, who also points out that the education facet – it is – is one of the outputs that this career has.

Nowadays it would be unthinkable that a physicist in the loneliness of his room, which means that his calculations are handmade, reached transcendental discoveries or simply perform complex works. So cooperation work is imposed. «We are all confronted with a computer and it is impossible for us to do it alone, we have to trust others, do collaborations. The basic physics is greatly overcome and now they are subdivided problems and use computers to move forward. We need a ‘bicycle for the mind’, Corbi illustrates. That is, means going faster when achieving results, ‘not like in Einstein’s time’, where everything was more manual.

Although Corbi still believes that physics still has a bad press and does not seem accessible “because of how much it is taught in high school and even, sometimes, at university level,” he is convinced that this has already started to change. «Traditionally it is much divided by areas and neither intuition, motivation or curiosity was generated. They gave us some recipes to learn, but we didn’t really know what they served, ” Regret. And so it is of course impossible to find the ‘feeling’. «For example, when they explained the parabolic shot. Why did they not tell you that he actually developed to kill better, throw a well -bent bomb? –The Corbi question, with physical precision of course. That ‘glue’ was missing, that scaffolding that the current distribution knows how to explode. I have discovered things by hearing their podcasts.