• Question: Can you branch into theoretical physics without previous knowledge of mechanical physics?

    Asked by 492prtb33 to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 18 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 17 Mar 2015:

      Mechanics is part of theoretical physics since there is a well defined theory describing the motion of bodies. If you are asking about jumping in advanced topics such as quantum field theory without any knowledge of classical mechanics I would discourage such jump, you would be missing important basic concepts, but it could probably be done considering that the maths is quite different in the two cases and QFT is based on different assumption than classical mechanics.

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      As a mathematician who skipped classical mechanics and went straight to quantum field theory I’m going to say yes it is definitely doable – but it will take you a little bit longer to get your head round it and a lot of work to catch up with everybody else! 😛

    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      For sure, but as the others have pointed out, you’ll just have a bit of catching up to do.

      To be honest with you I’m a theoretical physicist, but my mechanics is horrible! I got a D or an E in Mechanics 2 at A-level — I always find spatial problems confusing, so it wasn’t exactly my jam. I made it through my degree though, and now I work on 1-D spin chains, so all is well 😛

      The trick is to know your weaknesses, and work harder on problems that need them.

Comments