#physicist

In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, “I see you’re an astrophysicist. What’s that?” I answer, “Astrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universe—the Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing.” Then he asks, “What do you teach at Princeton?” and I say, “I teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony.” Five minutes later, I’m on the street. A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions we’d like to ask the court, and I say, “Yes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The ‘thousand’ cancels with the ‘milli-’ and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime.” Again I’m out on the street. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#astrophysics #eyewitness #jury-duty #science #universe

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#beauty #different #elegance #historians #intuition

What appeared to the earlier physicists to be the constant quantity of heat is nothing more than the whole motive power of the motion of heat, which remains constant so long as it is not transformed into other forms of work, or results afresh from them. ↗

— Hermann von Helmholtz

#appeared #constant #earlier #forms #heat

We should note that this latter type of shift was successfully amplified to a considerable extent by Russian physicists using the intense light of a ruby laser whose wavelength is close to that of a transition of the potassium atom. ↗

— Alfred Kastler

#atom #close #considerable #extent #intense

It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them. ↗

— Eugene Wigner

#long #nature #old #physical #physicist

I think it's science and physics are just starting to learn from all these experiments. These experiments have been carried out hundreds and hundreds of times in all sorts of ways that no physicist really questions the end point. I think that these experiments are very clearly telling us that consciousness is limitless and the ultimate reality. ↗

— Robert Lanza

#carried #clearly #consciousness #end #experiments

Medical physicists work in cooperation with doctors. A few medical physicists devote their time to research and teaching. A few get involved with administrative duties. ↗

— John Cameron

#cooperation #devote #doctors #duties #few

There are now over 5,000 medical physicists in the U.S more than 50 times the number in 1958. ↗

— John Cameron

#more #now #number #over #physicists

As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#figures #greatest #here #honors #humble

In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. ↗

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

#crude #extinguish #humor #knowledge #known