Brian Greene elegant universe. This is the typical illustration of general relativity.
I watched too much Brian Greene documentaries in high schools, it tooks years to recover from that, and my physics friends finally starts to talk to me.
Both of them are beyond excellent from a story telling and visual prospective: highly entertaining, motivating, and fun.
However the “physicists will stop talking to you” bit just comes from the fact that professionals typically expect rigorous discussions, instead of handwaving; as handwaving will sometimes leads to reasonable, yet completely nonsensical results. And over-fantasization of a topic can cause student burnouts quite quickly, when they discovered the field is completely different from what they imagined. Finally many just don’t enjiy string theory, as they describe a universe that is fundamentally different from ours, and they just keeps making up more math to fix unrealized predictions.
In general, I think the Brain Greene do benefit both the field physics and the general public, by bringing many talented students to physics. And I believe many teachers and professors can learn a lot about storytelling and visualization from pop sciences.
cocomutative_diagram@infosec.pub 2 years ago
Brian Greene elegant universe. This is the typical illustration of general relativity.
I watched too much Brian Greene documentaries in high schools, it tooks years to recover from that, and my physics friends finally starts to talk to me.
Karjalan@lemmy.world 2 years ago
I’ve seen his fabric of the the cosmos series and loved it. How does elegant universe rate?
cocomutative_diagram@infosec.pub 2 years ago
Both of them are beyond excellent from a story telling and visual prospective: highly entertaining, motivating, and fun.
However the “physicists will stop talking to you” bit just comes from the fact that professionals typically expect rigorous discussions, instead of handwaving; as handwaving will sometimes leads to reasonable, yet completely nonsensical results. And over-fantasization of a topic can cause student burnouts quite quickly, when they discovered the field is completely different from what they imagined. Finally many just don’t enjiy string theory, as they describe a universe that is fundamentally different from ours, and they just keeps making up more math to fix unrealized predictions.
In general, I think the Brain Greene do benefit both the field physics and the general public, by bringing many talented students to physics. And I believe many teachers and professors can learn a lot about storytelling and visualization from pop sciences.