‘Physics of Whatever’ Relevant but Not Always Accurate

Robert L. Dixon’s letter (Physics Today, October 2003, page 15 ) decrying the growth of publications and Web sites with the nominal title “physics of——” aims at the wrong target. His thesis that “[nobody] really cares about this kind of ‘physics of’ stuff” is belied by the enormous popularity of, for example, The Physics of Baseball by Robert Adair (Perennial, 2002) and The Physics of Golf by my colleague Ted Jorgensen (Springer and AIP Press, 1999).

The serious problem that Dixon doesn’t address is that many of these Web sites contain wrong or at least poorly worded physics. An Internet search for topics related to the physics of football, a topic in which I have a passing interest, yields such useful information as “when the football is thrown and a spin is put on it, centrifugal force keeps the ball aligned during its flight,” and “momentum can’t be lost; it can only be transferred. If you catch a football, then the football’s momentum goes through you and into the earth (or else you fall down).”

Physicists have an obligation to teach others about physics. One good way to do this is to connect physics with things that people actually care about. But it is important to make sure that the science is right.