Physics: The Science of the Universe and Everything In ItAlong with chemistry and biology, physics completes the trinity of the original “hard” sciences - those that use testable predictions and hypotheses, experiments, and mathematics and modelling as opposed to the “soft” sciences which use more qualitative data and which relies far less on testing.
What is Physics?
All of our modern sciences take their names from ancient Greek. In the case of physics, that word is “physik��-” the translated as “knowledge of nature”. Physics, then, means studying nature at its most base level - matter, behavior and motion, energy types, time and space, and their actions and interactions (1). It has gone from an inextricable link with chemistry and biology, and even natural philosophy prior to the Enlightenment to becoming a major force in its own right in the scientific age.
It is the science dedicated to understanding how our world and the universe behaves and why it does what it does. It seems that every time there is a new discovery in physics, it throws up more questions than answers and opens new fields of study. Today, it overlaps with many other sciences and has had a profound impact on the environmental sciences just as chemistry has. It also underpins the physical sciences by providing the theoretical framework on which it may base its own assumptions and basic theoretical models.
Physics is/has:
Calculated the distance between the Earth and bodies outside of our solar system including other stars within our field of view and other galaxies
Calculated the age of our sun and how long we can reasonably expect it to keep on burning
vital for new technologies that all of us use every day from solar panel technology to wind turbine, engineering design, and the creation of new alloys and polymers
Responsible for nuclear physics which has given us nuclear power, and nuclear medicine which has opened up new avenues of medical treatment for such things as cancer
