hihi!! i recently discovered your work parallax and it’s so good! you’re amazing at writing, and i love the science references throughout it :3 i was wondering how did you get “good” with physics? i’m currently taking physics in school, and your work has made me a LOT more interested in it, but im not sure where to start with studying/researching it. sorry for rambling, and hope this doesn’t sound too weird!!
I'm sorry I missed your ask until now!! Real Life has gotten very busy for me so I'm not as online anymore.
Thank you for the compliment - I'm flattered! But I don't know if I ever got "good" with physics. I took my first physics class in high school, so I've done it for a long time, but I was never the top of my class. I did go to engineering school for my bachelor's, so I got decent at physics, but I would say that came from a lot of practice and trial-and-error. Like many things in life, I believe that being "good" at physics (or any other science/engineering field in general) is a skill, not a talent.
I found that framing the dry physics equation into real-life problems to be most fun and motivating for studying. For example, how do airplanes fly? How do rail guns work? How does light bend around corners? (The answer to these questions are: aerodynamics, electromagnetism, and diffraction.)
For more academic pursuits, there's great online guides and websites, like this one, which show the relationship between all the different fields as well as detail some of the basic equations for them. I also watched (and still watch) a lot of science Youtube channels, like 3Blue1Brown (he has a separate playlist for physics but his other content is also quite good). The beauty of science fields like physics is that you can go super deep into one niche thing and still feel like you're barely scratching the surface!
I also found it super comforting to know that most collegiate researchers in the science and engineering fields are super nerds. So if you're on a college campus, try reaching out to your physics department, walk around during a master's poster presentation session (those are likely public and free), or attend a lab open house day. More often than not, the people working on various physics (and other science) topics will be happy to introduce you. :)
