Inspired by a century of physics

I love the last line in Michael Turner’s Reference Frame “A Century of Physics: 1950 to 2050” ( Physics Today, September 2009, page 8 .) He wrote, “You’d have to be crazy to bet against physics.” I am a high-school physics teacher in the Houston Independent School District and often have to answer questions from students about whether all the laws of physics have been discovered, leaving them with nothing much to look forward to in making their own revolutionary discoveries. My rudimentary answer remains rooted in the idea that physics, like all sciences, always offers an ever-expanding playing field where an answer carries with it a host of other questions that each need to be addressed in turn before the original question is completely answered. Invariably, I get polite nods from the students but always with curved eyebrows and traces of suspicion that their teacher’s broad answer may, in fact, be a subtle admission that their observation is correct.

Turner’s article will definitely help me give a more satisfying answer and perhaps, for a change, draw positive wide-eyed reactions from my students.