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So there have been roughly 75 versions of this talk in my head

over the last three weeks or so,

and at least 10 in the last two hours.

So we'll see exactly where this goes.

First, some framing quotes. I was very

pleased when Dr. Hasting had a quote from Richard Feynman, because while philosophically, there are

odd little quips he makes. Pedagogically, he's just an amazing teacher of physics. I spent a lot

of time reading his lectures on light and QED to remind myself of what I had forgotten.

So it was very helpful.

But in doing that, I came across a quote which struck me interestingly.

It says, physicists always have a habit of taking the simplest example of any phenomenon

and calling it physics, leaving the more complicated examples to become concerns of other fields,

say applied math, electrical engineering, chemistry, or crystallography. Even solid-state physics is really only half

physics because it worries too much about special substances. For instance, one of the important

properties of crystals or most substances is that their electric polarizability is different

in different directions. But in physics, we usually start out talking about the special case in which the polarizability is different in different directions.

But in physics, we usually start out talking about the special case in which the polarizability

...