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Written by Richard Tilghman Weidner , Laurie M. Brown • All
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Nov 5, 2024 • Article History

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Bernoulli model of gas pressure As conceived by

Daniel Bernoulli in Hydrodynamica (1738), gases
consist of numerous particles in rapid random motion…
...(more)
He assumed that the pressure of a gas is produced by
Top Questions

What is physics?

Why does physics work in SI units?

physics, science that deals with the
structure of matter and the interactions
between the fundamental constituents of
the observable universe. In the broadest
sense, physics (from the Greek physikos) is
concerned with all aspects of nature on
both the macroscopic and submicroscopic
levels. Its scope of study encompasses not
only the behaviour of objects under the
action of given forces but also the nature
and origin of gravitational,
electromagnetic, and nuclear force fields.
Its ultimate objective is the formulation of
a few comprehensive principles that bring
together and explain all such disparate
phenomena.

(Read Einstein’s 1926 Britannica essay on

space-time.)

Key People: Rafi Bistritzer • Fabiola

A… Ferenc
Gianotti • Donna Strickland •...(Show more)Krausz

Related Topics: mechanics • optics •

quantum mechanics • cosmology … more)
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Physics is the basic physical science. Until

rather recent times physics and natural
philosophy were used interchangeably for
the science whose aim is the discovery and
formulation of the fundamental laws of
nature. As the modern sciences developed
and became increasingly specialized,
physics came to denote that part of
physical science not included in astronomy,
chemistry, geology, and engineering.
Physics plays an important role in all the
natural sciences, however, and all such
fields have branches in which physical laws
and measurements receive special
emphasis, bearing such names as
astrophysics, geophysics, biophysics, and
even psychophysics. Physics can, at base,
be defined as the science of matter, motion,
and energy. Its laws are typically expressed
with economy and precision in the
language of mathematics.

Both experiment, the observation of

phenomena under conditions that are
controlled as precisely as possible, and
theory, the formulation of a unified
conceptual framework, play essential and
complementary roles in the advancement
of physics. Physical experiments result in
measurements, which are compared with
the outcome predicted by theory. A theory
that reliably predicts the results of
experiments to which it is applicable is said
to embody a law of physics. However, a law
is always subject to modification,
replacement, or restriction to a more
limited domain, if a later experiment
makes it necessary.

The ultimate aim of physics is to find a

unified set of laws governing matter,
motion, and energy at small (microscopic)
subatomic distances, at the human
(macroscopic) scale of everyday life, and
out to the largest distances (e.g., those on
the extragalactic scale). This ambitious goal
has been realized to a notable extent.
Although a completely unified theory of
physical phenomena has not yet been
achieved (and possibly never will be), a
remarkably small set of fundamental
physical laws appears able to account for
all known phenomena. The body of physics
developed up to about the turn of the 20th
century, known as classical physics, can
largely account for the motions of
macroscopic objects that move slowly with
respect to the speed of light and for such
phenomena as heat, sound, electricity,
magnetism, and light. The modern
developments of relativity and quantum
mechanics modify these laws insofar as
they apply to higher speeds, very massive
objects, and to the tiny elementary
constituents of matter, such as electrons,
protons, and neutrons.

Britannica Quiz

Physics and Natural Law

The scope of physics

The traditionally organized branches or
fields of classical and modern physics are
delineated below.

Mechanics

illustration of Robert Hooke's law of elasticity of

materials Illustration of Hooke's law of elasticity of
materials, showing the stretching of a spring in…...(more)
proportion to the applied force, from Robert Hooke's
Mechanics is generally taken to mean the
study of the motion of objects (or their lack
of motion) under the action of given forces.
Classical mechanics is sometimes
considered a branch of applied
mathematics. It consists of kinematics, the
description of motion, and dynamics, the
study of the action of forces in producing
either motion or static equilibrium (the
latter constituting the science of statics).
The 20th-century subjects of quantum
mechanics, crucial to treating the structure
of matter, subatomic particles,
superfluidity, superconductivity, neutron
stars, and other major phenomena, and
relativistic mechanics, important when
speeds approach that of light, are forms of
mechanics that will be discussed later in
this section.

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In classical mechanics the laws are initially

formulated for point particles in which the
dimensions, shapes, and other intrinsic
properties of bodies are ignored. Thus in
the first approximation even objects as
large as Earth and the Sun are treated as
pointlike—e.g., in calculating planetary
orbital motion. In rigid-body dynamics, the
extension of bodies and their mass
distributions are considered as well, but
they are imagined to be incapable of
deformation. The mechanics of deformable
solids is elasticity; hydrostatics and
hydrodynamics treat, respectively, fluids at
rest and in motion.

The three laws of motion set forth by Isaac

Newton form the foundation of classical
mechanics, together with the recognition
that forces are directed quantities (vectors)
and combine accordingly. The first law,
also called the law of inertia, states that,
unless acted upon by an external force, an
object at rest remains at rest, or if in
motion, it continues to move in a straight
line with constant speed. Uniform motion
therefore does not require a cause.
Accordingly, mechanics concentrates not
on motion as such but on the change in the
state of motion of an object that results
from the net force acting upon it. Newton’s
second law equates the net force on an
object to the rate of change of its
momentum, the latter being the product of
the mass of a body and its velocity.
Newton’s third law, that of action and
reaction, states that when two particles
interact, the forces each exerts on the other
are equal in magnitude and opposite in
direction. Taken together, these
mechanical laws in principle permit the
determination of the future motions of a
set of particles, providing their state of
motion is known at some instant, as well as
the forces that act between them and upon
them from the outside. From this
deterministic character of the laws of
classical mechanics, profound (and
probably incorrect) philosophical
conclusions have been drawn in the past
and even applied to human history.

Lying at the most basic level of physics, the

laws of mechanics are characterized by
certain symmetry properties, as
exemplified in the aforementioned
symmetry between action and reaction
forces. Other symmetries, such as the
invariance (i.e., unchanging form) of the
laws under reflections and rotations
carried out in space, reversal of time, or
transformation to a different part of space
or to a different epoch of time, are present
both in classical mechanics and in
relativistic mechanics, and with certain
restrictions, also in quantum mechanics.
The symmetry properties of the theory can
be shown to have as mathematical
consequences basic principles known as
conservation laws, which assert the
constancy in time of the values of certain
physical quantities under prescribed
conditions. The conserved quantities are
the most important ones in physics;
included among them are mass and energy
(in relativity theory, mass and energy are
equivalent and are conserved together),
momentum, angular momentum, and
electric charge.

The study of gravitation

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) Laser

Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a Beyond
Einstein Great Observatory, is scheduled for launch in…
...(more)
2035. Funded by the European Space Agency, LISA will
This field of inquiry has in the past been
placed within classical mechanics for
historical reasons, because both fields were
brought to a high state of perfection by
Newton and also because of its universal
character. Newton’s gravitational law states
that every material particle in the universe
attracts every other one with a force that
acts along the line joining them and whose
strength is directly proportional to the
product of their masses and inversely
proportional to the square of their
separation. Newton’s detailed accounting
for the orbits of the planets and the Moon,
as well as for such subtle gravitational
effects as the tides and the precession of
the equinoxes (a slow cyclical change in
direction of Earth’s axis of rotation),
through this fundamental force was the
first triumph of classical mechanics. No
further principles are required to
understand the principal aspects of
rocketry and space flight (although, of
course, a formidable technology is needed
to carry them out).

curved space-time The four dimensional space-time

continuum itself is distorted in the vicinity of any mass,
with the amount of distortion depending on the mass…
...(more)
and the distance from the mass. Thus, relativity
The modern theory of gravitation was
formulated by Albert Einstein and is called
the general theory of relativity. From the
long-known equality of the quantity “mass”
in Newton’s second law of motion and that
in his gravitational law, Einstein was struck
by the fact that acceleration can locally
annul a gravitational force (as occurs in the
so-called weightlessness of astronauts in an
Earth-orbiting spacecraft) and was led
thereby to the concept of curved space-
time. Completed in 1915, the theory was
valued for many years mainly for its
mathematical beauty and for correctly
predicting a small number of phenomena,
such as the gravitational bending of light
around a massive object. Only in recent
years, however, has it become a vital
subject for both theoretical and
experimental research. (Relativistic
mechanics refers to Einstein’s special
theory of relativity, which is not a theory of
gravitation.)

The study of heat,

thermodynamics, and statistical
mechanics

temperature scales Standard and absolute

temperature scales.

Heat is a form of internal energy associated

with the random motion of the molecular
constituents of matter or with radiation.
Temperature is an average of a part of the
internal energy present in a body (it does
not include the energy of molecular
binding or of molecular rotation). The
lowest possible energy state of a substance
is defined as the absolute zero (−273.15 °C,
or −459.67 °F) of temperature. An isolated
body eventually reaches uniform
temperature, a state known as thermal
equilibrium, as do two or more bodies
placed in contact. The formal study of
states of matter at (or near) thermal
equilibrium is called thermodynamics; it is
capable of analyzing a large variety of
thermal systems without considering their
detailed microstructures.

First law

The first law of thermodynamics is the

energy conservation principle of mechanics
(i.e., for all changes in an isolated system,
the energy remains constant) generalized
to include heat.

Second law

The second law of thermodynamics asserts

that heat will not flow from a place of lower
temperature to one where it is higher
without the intervention of an external
device (e.g., a refrigerator). The concept of
entropy involves the measurement of the
state of disorder of the particles making up
a system. For example, if tossing a coin
many times results in a random-appearing
sequence of heads and tails, the result has a
higher entropy than if heads and tails tend
to appear in clusters. Another formulation
of the second law is that the entropy of an
isolated system never decreases with time.

Third law

The third law of thermodynamics states

that the entropy at the absolute zero of
temperature is zero, corresponding to the
most ordered possible state.

Statistical mechanics
A