Brief History of Physics

PHYSICS

HISTORY OF PHYSICS

Physics (from the Ancient Greek φύσις physis meaning "nature") is the fundamental branch of science that developed out of the study of nature and philosophy known, until around the end of the 19th century, as "natural philosophy". Today, physics is ultimately defined as the study of matter, energy and the relationships between them. Physics is, in some senses, the oldest and most basic pure science; its discoveries find applications throughout the natural sciences, since matter and energy are the basic constituents of the natural world. The other sciences are generally more limited in their scope and may be considered branches that have split off from physics to become sciences in their own right. Physics today may be divided loosely into classical physics and modern physics.

Ancient history

Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy. Ancient philosophy, meanwhile – including what was called "physics" – focused on explaining nature through ideas such as Aristotle's four types of "cause".

MAJOR FIELDS

Branches of physics

Physics deals with the combination of matter and energy. It also deals with a wide variety of systems, about which theories have been developed that are used by physicists. In general, theories are experimentally tested numerous times before they are accepted as correct as a description of Nature (within a certain domain of validity). For instance, the theory of classical mechanics accurately describes the motion of objects, provided they are much larger than atoms and moving at much less than the speed of light. These theories continue to be areas of active research: for instance, a remarkable aspect of classical mechanics known as chaos was...