What is Veeky Forums opinion on physicists again?

people too stupid for mathematics

Theoretical physics is a scam. If you think it is rigorous then guess what, you are wrong. Here is a story:
> read about Noether Theorem
> guy explains shit involving "a hypothetical wall with infinitely high mass"
> yeah ma nigga do not pull this shit on me
This is one story out of many. Another one:
> read lecture script on theoretical classical mechanics
> section is about planets and their trajectories
>"the earth's diameter is so small compared to the distance to the sun, we will neglect it and treat it as point mass"
> tfw this shit is neither rigorous, nor precise, nor of practical use
Get your shit together physics fags!

>be a rigorous physicist
>today we will count the number of atoms on Earth by hand

>>"the earth's diameter is so small compared to the distance to the sun, we will neglect it and treat it as point mass"

A satellite is so small compared to the distance from earth, we can treat it as a point mass. And from that we built the first space-based laboratory.

No physicist likes approximation, but sometimes it just makes no difference whatsoever in the end, and it helps us progress.

Dead field

Chemistry, biology, and their sub fields are the future

>>"the earth's diameter is so small compared to the distance to the sun, we will neglect it and treat it as point mass"
In most circumstances, that is sufficient, unless you want to compute e.g. tidal forces, of course.
You can always make everything as complicated as you want in physics by writing down some 10^23 euqations of motion (all coupled differential equations, of course) to e.g. also model the earth's atmosphere along with its non-vanishing radius, but then you have no hope of solving anything.

They are terrible mathematician if they can even be bothered to understand their formulas

But where is the theorem that states that such assumptions do not increase measurement errors?

What are the limitations of such theorem? When is it not appropite to assume your object is not a point.

The distance from your crotch to the pants is so big that we can treat your dick as point mass?

>Not without my baseless assumptions!

You should really crack open a classical mechanics (or even E&M) book sometime to read about the approximations you're criticizing. It's always important that such assumptions are justified, and if it's really a concern you can calculate corrections due to point-mass assumptions.

What's incredibly important is that the object not only has dimensions much smaller than the radial distance to the gravitating body (also taken to be a point mass, usually), but that its mass is much, much less as well. In this case, it's simply orbital motion to a good approximation.

Your lack of knowledge or inability to determine something on your own does not mean it's not been done or hasn't been considered. I seriously recommend reading some mechanics books sometime to ease your mind and work things out to convince yourself.

Well you've certainly shown physicists the world over, it's not like there's something from mathematics that justifies approximating functions and such in some neighbourhood of some value.

This is either bait, or you're 15.

Topkek

I've always felt that physics has a range of usefulness from insanely relevant and important to every day life, to just kinda neat.

As of now, astrophysics is kinda just in that interesting category. However, things involving electronics, optics, materials (although more chemistry) that have direct impact on engineering are actually pretty cool. Like, fusion and plasma physics are pretty fucking great, but I couldn't care less about planets that will never be colonized, or even explored in my lifetime.

they can solve equations and visualize things

like a mathematician with imagination

You're modeling situations--of course you use approximations when they're justified. When you learn physics in high school or during undergrad, some problems may start with some extreme simplifying assumptions. If they didn't, the field would be next to impossible to learn. As you learn more, you can see WHY some assumptions don't apply to certain situations and learn to solve the problem correctly.

There will always be assumptions though because the whole point of physics is to take a real situation and model it more simply. If your mathematical model doesn't work, then one of your assumptions was bad. You eventually get comfortable with it and realize that there's nothing wrong with it.

They have some awful notation (eg bra-kets), but other than that, they're pretty great.

>No physicist likes approximation
Are you kidding me, look up Fermi problems. Physicists take pride in their ability to calculate things approximately.

Physicists tend to try to be useful so they do approximations, unlike you math faggots who dream and fap to useless shit

As if physicists wouldn't dream and fap to useless shit.

This is why you should study applied math

Pretty much this.