Scientific Definition and 550 Threads

Recently @Ackbach posted a thread “Discuss Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical Practice”. He cites an article from PLOS (Public Library of Science) “Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical Practice”. The article references the article “Ten Simple Rules for Writing a PLOS Ten Simple...

Ancient knowledge is more scientific than politically whitewashed ideas of our present era. People often decide for themselves what is real based on who told them. Real science most come from experimental methods and vast research which only postulates but rarely proves anything and only...

I was reading an article on scientists claiming an illusionary nature of time: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a61021621/is-time-just-an-illusion/. These sorts of speculations really bother me. Time is a measurement of motion. As long as motion exists, time can be used to measure it...

hello I own two books of quantum physics In the first part the authors emphasize the bra-ket notation, explaining how important and useful it is in the second part, they go to pratical examples no mention of brackets , they just use the Schrodinger's equation.... may you suggest a book or an...

Distressing news: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/09/scientific-misconduct-retraction-watch

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-travel-possible/

I feel compelled to note a valuable new article in the magazine Science about the task of writing scientific papers in English when your native language is not English. The article is written by a Chinese scientist who did his PhD in the U.K. The basic message is to keep it simple. Use short...

This Nature paper that attempts to quantify diminishing returns from scientific research across a wide range of fields is getting a fair amount of press. My initial take was just a 'low hanging fruit' argument where all the 'easy' discoveries have been made. The authors argue against that...

According to professional scientific literature and to our best understanding, are there any suggestions that entanglement might imply some sort of faster than light signaling between the entangled particles? I know that according to relativity nothing can travel faster than light, but what...

Hello All : hope all are fine and well : during my scientific reading i may found a way to enhance the efficiency of some sort of simple engines , now i am working on a prototype which should be ready in few weeks for testing , the question is what next ? i am interested in solid state...

Anton Zeilinger, wrote, " "We always implicitly assume the freedom of the experimentalist... This fundamental assumption is essential to doing science. If this were not true, then, I suggest, it would make no sense at all to ask nature questions in an experiment, since then nature could...

A lot of the work I am interested to do will be mostly built from scratch by myself, provided there is fair support for numerical types (like complex numbers) and high precision numerical operations (if not, I'll be happy to write those routines as well). Many of my areas of interest are...

Hi, I'm having two serious issues with writing a document in Scientific Workplace. In Microsoft Word one can choose a paper size such as 'Letter' and Word would restrict the written sentences within the defined margins. Is it possible to do in Scientific Workplace? Is it possible to use...

A very "meta" idea crossed my mind today, and I'd like some feedback. Apologies in advance in case the half-formedness of said idea results in a meandering post. The specific connection I made was that the creation-versus-evolution "debate" could be characterized, at its most basic, as the...

As I understand it, the Novikov's principle is either philosophical or scientific. I heard that it is a consequence of the stationary-action principle (principle of least action) in quantum mechanics. Does this mean that Novikov's principle is scientific? I also heard the following: in quantum...

I read in an article that "Quantum physics is a highly mathematical theory that describes the nature of reality at the atomic and subatomic level". I also read another article that says quantum physics does not tell anything about reality. Can you give me some context about it in a way that is...

https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/b49101a8-ad23-44dc-9500-ecec551c08b8.pdf This was unexpected. In a 55 page decision from the Superior Court of DC, the judge said the following. The scientist litigator, and his expert witnesses said: It seems to me that the judge gets it, and...

I have been reading 2010: The Year We Make Contact, a sci-fi book belonging to a classic series by Arthur Clarke. The book involves a myraid of scientific concepts so I think it is worth it to verify if the scenes would be feasible in the real word. In this thread I'd like to focus on the scene...

Summary:: Any good english or german sources for Casimir effect, quantum fluctuations or zero point energy Hello, fellow quantum physicists I am currently writing a detailed physics script for my quantum physics project and I wanted to ask if you know some good internet sources on the theme of...

In a self learning project I am fooling around book https://faculty.washington.edu/rjl/fdmbook/ I want to do some of the computation myself to better understand the concepts but the book is Matlab based and Matlab is too expensive. Does anyone by any chance have some of the codes provided by...

Has there ever been a lone scientist (maybe even self taught) who made a break through theory or scientific discovery? I am going to say something kind of weird but I have romantic thoughts in my head of teaching myself advanced physics through the internet and somehow doing something 'great' in...

I have a problem: in the same anime I saw that Senku estimated the time to start burning the paper in sixty seconds, one minute and with a lens. The data is as follows: The lens he used has a diameter of 5 centimeters. The solar constant, assuming it is the same as 3700 years ago, is 1362 watts...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-views-of-quantum-jumps-challenge-core-tenets-of-physics/?fbclid=IwAR0z2pTmGqTBkm2JzvSNe6piKPZCGbhdpyZWcHeLO_2B-w5fPxFRKgfrGvY I love quantum physics almost mystical and paradoxical nature. That seems to be ending. Especially with the advent of...

Once upon a time, I was subscribed to Scientific American. Once upon another time, I use to regularly read the New Scientist at a library. Does any know the quality of these magazines these days? I am looking for gift ideas for a bright and curious teenager.

In considering possible scenarios invoked to explain the origin of life, I find myself searching for a general term which can be applied to the first units on the way to becoming living cells. Currently, I am using the term "entity", but am unsatisfied with it because I consider it about the...

Thought this might be an interesting question. Feel free to post why it was hard and/or what let you finally understand it.

I have been reading statistics for a while (I am a physics major but also a stat-enthusiast), and one of the topics that drew my attention was the misrepresentation, or to be precise, misinterpretation of the data. This came up while reading about Simpson's paradox and the likes. When I see...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/ I mentioned this just last night and a great article in Sci American was posted this morning. So what do you think, are we living in the matrix? I say no, however I have no problem viewing DNA as a...

[Moderator's Note: Thread spun off from previous thread in General Discussion since it is more specifically about particular scientific theories and how to test them against data.] So in your opinion, everything in the list below is quantitative, not qualitative...

I didn't really want to create another thread just to make a (hopefully) humorous observation but on the other hand to link to this paper under a "cranky science" header hardly seems fair. Especially when I really haven't read the thing in it's entirety. One very scientific statement piqued my...

Biorhythms have been "known" about for many decades There are 3 rhythms - 23, 28 and 33 day cycles - physical, emotional and mental respectively. biorhythms pic These must have been calculated using observation of human qualities and noting them down My question is - are there any external...

Excellent read on the brokenness of the scientific method: there are many, many issues, ranging from conflicts of interest, data falsification, lack of proper incentives, abysmal lack of statistical knowledge, etc. As many as HALF of scientific papers published today might simply be wrong! In...

We are hearing more of herd immunity particularly in the wake of the recent SARS-CoV2. What is herd immunity? Is it real? Or is it a mere statistical reality? How come somebody who is not vaccinated would be protected because more of somebody else is vaccinated? Logically I am unable to...

Hello, I'm the head of youth scientific club at my High School. Because there's a pandemic going on, schools are closed and god knows when they reopen. Earlier before, I have a couple of programs that are being planned to produce scientific papers but they are all postponed. Now, all my...

Hey guys, so recently I've been trying to use mathematica to plot graphs for my scientific papers, and I've been starting to wonder - what plot options do you guys use? How do you plot your graphs in mathematica such that they look presentable in a scientific paper?

I'm hoping to see accounts of situations wherein a little (or maybe a lot) of scientific knowledge paid off. I'll start with one that's really basic, but in my view rather amusing. In the winter of '87 I was returning to Chicago, from DC where I'd been working on a USG contract (IBM mainframe...

I am thinking no for the first question because the mother is not applying a horizontal force to cause the baby to move horizontally. Maybe yes for #2? Please help

well I was watching the Third Season, and I was Confused, there's an esper her ability name is Float Dial it is an ability to control buoyancy. at first I understand, that it controls fluids thus able to slide on water walk on walker. but how the does she able to lift the heavy concrete and...

Supposed a future theory of Quantum Gravity reconciles Quantum Mechanics with the Theory of General Relativity, is mathematically self-consistent and makes falsifiable predictions which are not testable though. Can we ever trust a scientific theory which is self-consistent but not testable...

Hi. My understanding was that a scientific theory and law complement each other. There is a guy at work that insists that a theory with more evidence becomes a law. Recently he cited an article that said that a theory that has been repeatedly verified and appears to have a wide applicability in...

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/gps-is-going-places/ I really liked this article. It is not too long. Read it. The 5 ideas are: Feel an earthquake (@davenn will like this) Monitor a volcano Probe the snow Sense a sinking Analyze the atmosphere

How is a Scientific law or theory's accuracy tested? I've searched online about verification of Newton's law but the materials are unhelpful. Many show an experiment that verifies a particular instance of the law and then concludes the law is verified. We all know that there are infinite...

Dear all, to become a teacher I have to deduct a research to improve my teaching and/or to "solve" a didactical problem I encounter. This research, my proposal for a solution etc. has to be motivated by scientific literature. I observed that a lot of students have problems with formulating...

Adding drama and controversy to scientific reporting and written articles for the public is not new new to me. For over 20 years I've seen it in the global warming/climate change discussion. What is new to me is a high level of drama in controversy added to a couple of subjects that are normally...

I have posted this here because I am not sure it is relevant in any of the main boards. I have a question about what science can and cannot observe. Maybe this is too philosophical but I am more interested in a specific empirical matter. As biological creatures, our entire experience of the...

Assess the validity of this experiment and suggest ways in which it can be improved. The experiment was fairly valid as the experimental design tested the aim and all variables apart from those being investigated were kept constant. Now you would elaborate on this statement through evidence, etc

Hi PhysicsForums community! I am writing a short review on Optical Tweezers. I started with word but got tired of copy-pasting pics of equations using MathJax and ,besides, diagrams look pretty bad. What do you recommend for making up diagrams and writing equations? I have been thinking of...

Its been awhile since I even thought about conducting a scientific experiment, and I do remember that you need a dependent variable.. the observation or effect such as the apple fell from the tree, and then the independent variable, such as gravity. But in order to test the hypothesis, you...

Hello, My understanding of the scientific approach when faced with an unknown sequence: Hypothesis: There is an order/signal/bias/code = Goal to achieve Null hypothesis: Absence of bias/order/code = Equal Probability = Target to destroy. Science tries to break the code. In order to prove the...

Looking for suggestions on books (or other learning material) that will help me improve my skills using Python for scientific computing. I am comfortable with Python programming (syntax, conditional statements, loops, etc.), and use it for data analysis in my undergraduate experimental physics...