The word community gets mentioned over and over in these discussions, and for me that is essential feature of the Physics SE.

I was a teenage SciFi reading physics nerd back in the early 70s just about the time the Standard Model was reaching its final form. This was a fantastically exciting time, but if you lived in a small town in rural Somerset there was no-one to talk to about it. No-one.

So if a newcomer to the site wants to ask a basic question I will go to some trouble to write a detailed answer. This doesn't just mean answering their question, but maybe exploring related physics and trying to show what's so interesting about the physics behind it. I was going to cite a couple of such answers, but looking through my answers there are so many answers of this type it hardly seems pulling out one or two as examples.

The point is that I have to believe you're¹ really interested in the problem, and you'll be interested enough to read my answer and take it further by doing your own research. Since I can't read your mind I have to go by what you wrote in your question. That means your question has to show me you've thought about the problem and tried to Google it yourself, and that you're only asking here because you've come to a dead end. If this is the case then I don't care how basic your question is: if I think I can provide an interesting and informative answer then I will. Hopefully as you learn more about physics you'll start answering other people's questions yourself - there are plenty of examples on the site of this happening.

Now I appreciate I'm on the evangelist wing of this community, but while I suspect many members will regard my views as a little naive I suspect the vast majority agree with the basic principle. If you're interested and prepared to put some effort in we won't turn you away.

The flip side of this is that if you can't be arsed² then neither can I.

² © dmckee, 2014 - I thought this was a British expression. Shouldn't you colonials be saying can't be assed? :-)

The word community gets mentioned over and over in these discussions, and for me that is essential feature of the Physics SE.

I was a teenage SciFi reading physics nerd back in the early 70s just about the time the Standard Model was reaching its final form. This was a fantastically exciting time, but if you lived in a small town in rural Somerset there was no-one to talk to about it. No-one.

So if a newcomer to the site wants to ask a basic question I will go to some trouble to write a detailed answer. This doesn't just mean answering their question, but maybe exploring related physics and trying to show what's so interesting about the physics behind it. I was going to cite a couple of such answers, but looking through my answers there are so many answers of this type it hardly seems pulling out one or two as examples.

The point is that I have to believe you're¹ really interested in the problem, and you'll be interested enough to read my answer and take it further by doing your own research. Since I can't read your mind I have to go by what you wrote in your question. That means your question has to show me you've thought about the problem and tried to Google it yourself, and that you're only asking here because you've come to a dead end. If this is the case then I don't care how basic your question is: if I think I can provide an interesting and informative answer then I will. Hopefully as you learn more about physics you'll start answering other people's questions yourself - there are plenty of examples on the site of this happening.

Now I appreciate I'm on the evangelist wing of this community, but while I suspect many members will regard my views as a little naive I suspect the vast majority agree with the basic principle. If you're interested and prepared to put some effort in we won't turn you away.

The flip side of this is that if you can't be arsed² then neither can I.

² © dmckee, 2014 - I thought this was a British expression. Shouldn't you colonials be saying can't be assed? :-)