So far we've been aiming at undergrad-level physics students and higher
not the general public
@RakshitPai I suppose that is true
The issue with simple questions of the kind that the general public (i.e. people who aren't educated in physics) ask is that they can easily be ill-defined, and basically all we can meaningfully say is "physics can't answer this question"
@DavidZaslavsky People who aren't formally educated in physics but are curious about how things work could come up with questions like, "how does gravity work" or "how do you determine the gravitational pull on objects"
I think that it is ok to answer simple questions. They attract more people and we need any promotion in the beginning. Also, there are probably not so many popular trivial questions about relativity of quantum mechanics and they have to be answered once but will attract people forever :)
As a physics undergrad, I think that some of the problems explored and formulas derived in a course on undergraduate mechanics, modern physics, thermo, and electromagnetism are really elegant, subtle and beautiful. I have a nice collection of these types of problems in my notes and I would love to see more of them discussed on this site.
@Ami so would I. I'm tempted to say that we might be better off ignoring the advice we got from higher up about "seeding" (asking questions you already know the answer to)
i.e. they said don't do it - I think it was on one of the SO blog posts
by the way: for anyone who doesn't know the interface, if you hover over the right side of any chat message you'll see three little icons which can be used to flag the message, star it (like upvoting), or reply to it respectively
@DavidZaslavsky I know what you mean but experts should first learn about this site which is what this discussion is about. I don't suggest answering every simple question but there are few that appear all the time.
I agree with David about the quality of the site. In the last few days there have been lots of nice questions as advanced as AdS/CFT and the front page already has a little better feel thanks to it
@gigacyan okay, well we can keep an eye out for good simple questions. I guess the important thing is that the question can be answered in a high-quality way
If you have ideas for simple questions that can still solicit great answers, I'd say just ask them
@Ami: it was nice in that it made people think a lot. But I am not sure it's very useful as far as answers go and so on. I don't think Q&A based site that doesn't have a reasonable format for discussions is actually good for these types of questions
About the promotion: I was trying to put together the posters but I didn't get to it in the end. Perhaps over the Christmas. Does anyone has good ideas about what should go into such poster (e.g. just questions, or also answers? And what questions concretely?)
Thats the type of question (the one I posted from programmers) has a wide enough appeal that I'd be happy to post on my facebook page. I think a question like that would be great for promotion of the physics site too.
@mbq: those sites actually refer to us? that's pretty great. I love both qiao's and marco's blogs. perhaps it wouldn't be so hard to convince others as well
@mbq: sure. well, I am not really knowledgeable about how various blogs stands but I think TRF must be pretty high (it won science category in wordpress last year, or something like that)
It wouldn't be hard or out of line to send email to people running higher-traffic blogs. I've mentioned it a few times on ScienceBlogs, and you could probably get one or more of the Cosmic Variance bloggers to mention it.
@ami: definitely. As Jeff pointed out on meta, if a professional physicist takes a look on the site they are not likely to come back. We have to bring the good stuff (and there is some good stuff already) directly under their noses
Google is good promoter. If you search any question title you get first link to Physics.SE, so we should post questions that physicists are likely to search in google.
General relativity says that spacetime is a Lorentzian 4-manifold $M$ whose metric satisfies Einstein's field equations. I have two questions:
What topological restrictions do Einstein's equations put on the manifold. For instance, the existence of a Lorentz metric implies some topological th...
Hamiltonian's principle states that a dynamic system always follows a path such that action integral is stationary (that is maximum or minimum).
Why should action integral be stationary? On what basis did Hamilton stated this principle?
I've seen videos of people in space (on ISS) who squeeze a bottle or something and liquid comes out, it then separates into smaller balls.
Why is this surely it should stay pretty much together because theres no gravity from the Earth so the liquid should attract itself?
Hello,
I am looking for some literature on the Ising model, but I'm having a hard time doing so. All the documentation I seem to find is way over my knowledge.
Can you direct me to some documentation on it that can be parsed by my puny undergrad brain? If the answer is negative, can you explain...
There's an essential tension between wanting to have more expert-level discussions and at the same time wanting more overall traffic. The number of physicists out there just isn't that large.
My suggestion is attract more people first and sort them out later. It means simpler questions at the beginning that might scare away some experts but I think it is better then very slow growth with only high level questions.
For whatever reason, mathematicians have really embraced social media, while physicists have not to the same degree. It's kind of like the way that nobody has yet managed a life-science analogue of the arxiv, despite several attempts.
mathematical stuff can actually always be deduced. in physics one makes all kinds of assumptions and approximations that deserve to be explained but are not usually
@DavidZaslavsky I realized my mistake: I was only thinking of attracting people who will ask questions but it is more important to find people willing to answer them.
People who use math.SE do so because they have an appreciation for beautiful mathematics. People who come to physics.se may do so for one of two reasons: 1) to better understand the world in a tangible intuitive way, 2) because the derivations and the math involved are amazingly elegant in a way that is parallel but also very distinct from pure mathematics.
@gigacyan true. Though I guess we need both to some extent. Anyway I do appreciate the thought you're putting into this, even if I may disagree sometimes
@DavidZaslavsky You might want to go farther out than that, what with the holidays-- early January might be better. Unless there's some urgent need to boost traffic sooner.
Hamiltonian's principle states that a dynamic system always follows a path such that action integral is stationary (that is maximum or minimum).
Why should action integral be stationary? On what basis did Hamilton stated this principle?
Hello,
I am looking for some literature on the Ising model, but I'm having a hard time doing so. All the documentation I seem to find is way over my knowledge.
Can you direct me to some documentation on it that can be parsed by my puny undergrad brain? If the answer is negative, can you explain...
