Six Reasons Why No Student Should Go Through High School Without Taking Physics
1. Most modern technology came from Physcis. Any technology involving electricity, magnetism, mechanics, heat, light, sound, optics, etc. come from physics. Even though the basic knowledge required to discover fertilizers, drugs, plastics, and chemicals comes from chemistry and in some cases biology, all of these itmes have to be manufactured, and manufacturing is dominated by physics-based technology.
2. Most branches of sciences contain principles obtained from physics. Like technology, it is hard to find a branch of science which does not contain some physics-related aspect such as electricity, magnetism, heat, light, sound, optics, etc
3. College success for virtually all science, computer, engineering, and premedical majors depends on passing physics. College level physics is a required course for all of these majors. Engineering is almost entirely applied physics. Pre-medicine majors are typically required to take the same number of physics as biology classes! Also, about 25% of the science knowledged required for the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) is based on physics.
4. Physics classes hone thinking skills. Physics requires both mathematical and verbal skills. All problems in physics are word problems which require students to think logically, use analogies, and deal with subtle shades of meaning.
5. The job market for people with skills in physics is strong. Engineers are applied physicists and comprise the second largest profession in America with about 1.4 million members. By comparison, there are about 500 thousand medical doctors and only around 100 thousand biologists. However, even medical doctors and most biologists have to take college level physics courses.
6. A knowledge of physics is needed to understand music, art, and literature. Physics is the science which deals with sound. It is impossible to understand how instruments work or to build a theory of music without resorting to physics. Einstein, for instance, was an accomplished violinist. Physics is also the science of light. What could be more basic to an understanding of light? Leonardo da Vinci was not only a great artist but also an outstanding physicist. He was one of the first physicists to develp a wave theory of light. Clearly physicists have been influenced by literary figures. The physics term quark was taken from James Joyce and the term boojaums from Lewis Carroll. By the same token, many commonly used expressions in our everyday language come from physics. These include quantum leap, free fall, light years, black holes, resonance, and being on the same wave length. Many authors have used allusions to physics in their literary works. William Faulkner, for instance, used the symbolism of time dilation in The Sound and the Fury. John Updike and a host of other poets have used physics metaphors in their work. The arts and humanities cannot be fully understood without some background in physics.