Among all the terms that we use casually in talking about physics, without feeling the need to define or explicate them, the winner of the Citation Derby is probably the word “system.” Explicitly or by implication, the “physical system” defines the context in every class we teach, every seminar we give, every paper we write. Talking about physics without specifying the system is a vacuous exercise, and we exhort our students from the first day to think clearly about the system under consideration—what it includes and what it does not include, its relevant characteristics, its observable aspects, its degrees of freedom and its response to external influences and perturbations.
REFERENCES
1.
2.
R. Resnick, D. Halliday, Physics, 3rd ed., Wiley, New York (1977), chap. 21.
3.
4.
See “Federally Funded Research: Decisions for a Decade,” Office of Technology Assessment, Washington, DC, (1991);
R. Czujko, D. Kleppner, S. Rice, PHYSICS TODAY, February 1991, p. 37;
as well as the periodic reports on employment from the Education and Employment Statistics Division, the American Institute of Physics, New York
5.
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© 1991 American Institute of Physics.
1991
American Institute of Physics
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