The Evolution of Physics

The Evolution of Physics Dont forget to vote for me in the 2008 Blogging Scholarship for $10,000! I dont like physics. A lot of people seem to think I do. Id like to dispel those rumors: I dont like physics. Lucky for me, there are all sorts of majors here at MIT to choose from that have nothing to do with physics at all. I could be an electrical engineer, I could do brain and cognitive sciences, I could do chemistry or biology, or any number of different things. Which did I choose? Mechanical Engineering. I discovered something about mechanical engineering. Apart from physics, it has the most physics. Awesome, I picked a major that essentially is everything that I hate (physics) mixed with everything I love (building stuff). Working my way through physics problems in high school, freshman year, and now during sophomore year Im noticing a trend in physics problems: they get harder. Check this out Junior Year of High School: This is a nice summary of physics in high school for me: We have an Honors physics class where nothing is being learned We have an Asian (15% of the total asian population of my school) We have an Hispanic (30% of the total hispanic population of my school) We have a very difficult to build card house We have a water bottle on said card house We have more card house on said water bottle We have the teacher taking a picture of the lack of learning in his class. Needless to say things got different when I got to MIT. Freshman Year: What? You mean the horizontal component down the ramp is a sin instead of a cos!? Whoa dude, whoa. And then, a little later. . . Wait, blocks sliding on blocks? Wait, that doesnt . . . huh? Sophomore Year: This is when I realize that mechanical engineering = physics. I think it really struck me that physics was hard when I got this problem in my PSET thats due next week. Yep, lets see, cart attached to wall with a spring, a pendulum attached to the cart, a force applied to the end of the pendulum, and a dashpot between the pendulum and the wall. Suck. Flipping through my text book, I saw more and more physics, some of which actually would give me nightmares. Ive scanned one of those nightmarish ones for you to see. Ready? Can you handle this? AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *faint*