Monday, September 20, 2010

Secret Weapons of The Theoretical Physicist

Tonight I am thinking about a set of the most powerful techniques of the theoretist, classically called back-of-the-envelope calculations. These consitute two broad categories of methods.

The first is the method of estimation, where you use some basic reasoning abilities to determine a rough estimate of the quantities you are considering. For example, you want to estimate the number of hairs on someone's head. You think about it and decide that if you knew the area of the part of the head covered by hair, then knew the average area of a hair, you could figure it out. Then you make the necessary assumptions about the quantities (either by looking up the information, or by figuring it out for yourself).

The second is the ability to check the correctness of equations and to derive new equations by studying the relevant units of the quantities. All terms of any equation must have the same units. When you chaeck the terms, any that do not have the correct units are just wrong. By including powers of each quantity in each term and making sure all of the units come out the same, you invent a system of algebraic equations that can be solved. This gives you the necessary powers of each variable and shows you the structure of each term within a factor of a constant of proportionality. In this way you can learn what each term must look like. This allows you to invent new equations if you know the units involved. This is called dimensional analysis.

I will be writing about these ideas in my column in the coming weeks. I will also be discussing this in the Classical Mechanics book I am writing with Leonard Susskind.

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