So You Want to Learn Physics (2016)
My biggest struggles with Physics are psychological.<p>Because of how the universe works, if you fire a gun and drop a bullet from the same height they both reach the ground at the same time.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s because I have a cartoonish version of physics in my head, my first instinct is &quot;no that can&#x27;t be right&quot; and I start from a place of extreme skepticism that gnaws at me even as I watch myself being proved wrong.<p>The other common struggle I face is that so much of the physics you learn at a basic level comes with caveats like &quot;assuming no air resistance&quot; or &quot;in a vaccuum&quot; or &quot;at sea level&quot; and perfect weights and I end up wondering how futile all of it seems because in reality I&#x27;ll never be able to apply this stuff the way it&#x27;s being presented. If I have to actually apply it - I&#x27;d have to start thinking all the possible ways in which the system can be affected, then measure those ways and add them to my calculation.<p>Then I feel overwhelmed by all the possible things I would need to factor in. Did I forget friction? Is this surface 100% horizontal? Is it windy right now? Am I really at sea level? I feel like the street I&#x27;m on is 30m higher.<p>Then I start thinking about the practicality of measuring things. Even if I eventually learned all of the physics in theory, if I was one of the last 100 people on Earth and the person with the best physics knowledge, could I use it to build even something as simple as a bridge? How precise would my tools need to be? Is it ok for my execution to be off by 0.1 degree? Is that too much of an error? How would I even know?<p>With programming I feel like there are more opportunities to blackbox things and focus on building practical solutions, whereas with the material world I would have to worry about whether I got a faulty batch or whether the manufacturer was reputable or whether I should have spent more money on a better manufacturer. By comparison it feels incredibly inaccessible to do anything tangible with.