PHYS 101 Chapter 1: PHYS 101 – Chapter 1

• School: McGill University
• Department: Physics
• Course: PHYS 101
• Professor: Kenneth Ragan

Document Summary

Physics, like other sciences, is a creative endeavor. It is not simply a collection of facts. Important theories are created with the idea of explaining observations. To be accepted, theories are (cid:862)tested(cid:863) by comparing their predictions with the results of actual experiments. Note that, in general, a theory cannot be (cid:862)proved(cid:863) in an absolute sense. A model is a kind of picture or analogy that helps to describe the phenomena in terms of something we already know. A theory, often developed from a model, is deeper and more complex than a simple model. A scientific law is a concise statement, often expressed in the form of an equation, which quantitatively describes a wide range of phenomena. Measurements play a crucial role in physics, but can never be perfectly precise. It is important to specify the uncertainty of a measurement either by stating it directly using the. Notation, and/or by keeping only the correct number of significant figures.