# All Questions

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### Why was my question downvoted, and why won't people give advice when they downvote? [migrated]

I was working through Griffiths' for quantum mechanics, and I came across some problems where we have to calculate expectation values. This motivated me to ask the following question: https://math....
1 vote
33 views

### Can I ask for an example?

I'd like to ask for an example in which the minimum energy principle is used (thermodynamics). However, I've never seen a question in which examples are required, so I got the doubt that it's not ...
• 1,444
56 views

### How serial does serial upvoting need to be?

I had a -10 serial upvote reversal today. I was a bit puzzled since I had not seen much activity on my account recently. It seems that yesterday, someone upvoted two of my answers on neutron stars and ...
• 111k
67 views

### (How) Should I move a question from Math SE to Physics SE?

I asked a math question https://math.stackexchange.com/q/4475036/342834 in an area where physicists are likely to have a great deal of practical background. I had originally intended to post the ...
• 1,677
1 vote
56 views

### We shouldn't answer homework question directly, should we?

Taking the question as example, where someone solved the problem for the author whereas mine was related to hint (cause there's some steps left to think/solve). But -1 on my answer is for what? ...
• 294
1 vote
77 views

### Why was my question immediately closed?

Today I questioned the claim that "SR is way easier and more beautiful to understand with tensors". I think that knowing about vector spaces, their duals and bilinear forms (i.e. bilinear ...
• 1,244
61 views

### Is it okay to ask how to find certain labs on physics stack exchange?

I am currently trying to find labs and groups that are exploring a certain topic. The background is that I'm trying to apply to grad school and looking for labs that are suitable for my interest. The ...
1 vote
180 views

### Strange triple downvote on my (well-received) question

Could someone tell me why this question received 3 downvotes yesterday? I really thought it was well asked, it surprises me. Moreover, it received 3 upvotes before, so I believed it was alright. "...
167 views

### Reopen question request that may be useful for a large public

Please reopen this question Cosmology : Consecutive steps to get the posterior of parameters 1) determine fiducials, 2) Forecats with Fisher information 3) Validation with MCMC that I estimate useful ...
• 1
100 views

### Why don't we allow check-my-work questions?

John Rennie's answer in the meta thread currently has ~3x the upvotes of ACuriousMind's accepted answer. This seems to indicate we should allow check-my-work questions. Why do we still consider these ...
• 16.6k
82 views

### Why is the most voted question "how to cool my coffee with a spoon"?

From Cooling a cup of coffee with help of a spoon What is the fastest method to cool a cup of coffee, if your only available instrument is a spoon? This is the most successful question in this SE. ...
121 views

### Questions being responded to negatively

I know that there are some similar questions like this one, but I have a genuine concern. For example, the question A puzzling simple question on thermodynamics or another I had deleted. Apparently ...
• 34
333 views

### Is sharing recreational physics models allowed?

As someone interested in physics and creating theories for games, I tend to develop realistic physical models that might explain them out of curiosity. However, I do not know if it fits the Physics ...
• 280
99 views

### I am not a student and my questions are not "homework". I am a hobbyist. Do I need to tag these as homework questions?

I solve physics problems from a textbook that I enjoy. However, I am not a student and my questions are not "homework". I am a hobbyist. Do I need to tag these as homework questions? (I was ...
• 111
177 views

### Education tag and questions on physics education

Today, I have seen this question closed as an opinion-based question. I have read previous (short) discussions about the issue of questions on physics education topics in SE (see also this), but I do ...
• 23.6k
82 views

I consider the question in this post to be a conceptual question. This is because OP didn't understand which time interval to calculate - the question wasn't about the calculation itself. ...
• 1,164
121 views

### Why is this question closed? I am finding no satisfactory answers from the personal comment

I have a question about my Physics Stack Exchange post: Can time dilation be used to prove that relativistic mass does not really increase at speeds near $c$?
• 13
150 views

### Why has my answer to whether the fine structure constant been deleted?

My answer to this question on whether the fine structure constant can be calculated has been deleted by a moderator on the basis that the linked article is to a "non-mainstream publication." ...
• 12.1k
1 vote
123 views

### Post flagged as duplicate, but I still don't know the answer to my question! [closed]

This post was flagged as duplicate to this, but I couldn't understand all the replies very well. Mr John Rennie's reply seems to agree with my initial thought process, but I could be wrong; Is the ...
• 61
171 views

### Updating links upon site migration of https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum

Many links on the SE physics site presently go to my old web address: http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum and https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum This web site migrated to a new place, http://arnold-...
• 42.4k
83 views

### Has it become time to change the homework policy?

I believe at this point the strict homework policy is reducing the ability of the site to grow. The initial idea of banning homework so that people don't use this site as course help has been long ...
224 views

### Where is a statement of the purpose of physics.stackexchange?

Where is a statement of the purpose of physics.stackexchange?
91 views

### Cite documents rather than linking only

We should tell people to cite from documentation when they use link. I always look at old posts to learn something new, but some answerers give some link, but they are dead now (e.g., this). His first ...
• 294
271 views

### Is the purpose of physics.stackexchange to teach or to provide a stage?

I question the purpose of some Internet websites which include the present. As a now returning student of physics, admittedly with slower or less remembered skills, I find that the answers offered ...
178 views

### Why am I being downvoted in various posts?

So I received several notifications at the same time indicating "-2" in different answers of mine (old and new). I never understand why this happens. Is it that somebody is skimming at my ...
• 2,918
473 views

### Why was a question manually removed from hot network questions?

Yesterday I’ve run into a post and decided to give a pretty long answer to it. My purpose was to post a thorough answer that could attract attention of many people who are not otherwise generally ...
• 1,998
93 views

### When might the elimination of an answer by back-spacing (rather than "deletion") be acceptable?

I answered a question whose formulation had (possibly thru an OP's lack of familiarity with English-language rules for capitalization) effectively limited responses to it to the context of a single ...
• 760
64 views

### How does community wiki get decided on?

What are typically the criteria for marking a post as Community Wiki, besides having too many edits? I ask because I had a previous question get labeled as CW; if I understand correctly this label ...
• 4,017
350 views

### Why does the font size appear different for this question?

I saw a question on the Newest Questions page (the 3rd question in the image below) whose title and body were rendered in a smaller font compared to other questions. Here : https://i.stack.imgur.com/...
• 645
149 views

### Is Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics considered non-mainstream on this site?

I have asked a question about the Many-worlds interpretation of Quantum mechanics and it was closed just 3 minutes after it was asked. Is this topic unwelcome? P.S. In 2012 I made a questionnare about ...
• 10.6k
224 views

### Is a "how should these experimental results be interpreted?" question admissible?

I can't remember seeing posts about the interpretation of experimental results on SE, so I am not sure whether such a question is SE-legitimate. Concretely, after reading some rather old and largely ...
253 views

### Should users answer questions that they think should be closed?

From time to time I come across posts that are closed by a user/users who has/have also submitted an answer to the question. I feel like this goes against the goal of closure, which is to prevent ...
• 53.4k
77 views

### Comments sent to chat and addition of a new comment after that

In this closed question, the comments were moved by @rob to a chat. I was not interested in chatting, I just wanted to make an observation on the question itself, so I wrote a comment, which I found ...
• 222k
1 vote
60 views

### How can I get rid of the "preview" view when I load a question?

Everytime I access Physics SE I get this type of preview window: Then I have to click outside the frame to enter the page. How can I get rid of this? Why is this implemented in the first place?
297 views

### I need to get a better idea about essential mathematical prerequisites for GR from a book. How can I improve the question?

In reference to my question here: What would be essential math topics to read for general relativity (from a particular book)? I'm reading a book and wanted to get a clear understanding on what topics ...
107 views

### Why can't I write down tilde? Is there any MathJax syntax?

In an answer, I wanted to write , but that wasn’t showing. I think it wasn’t showing for Markdown. So I thought I should use ...
• 294
95 views

### Can one earn a golden tag after adding 100 000 tags?

I was attended to a question here on this site after I noticed in a question that a member does a whole lot of tagging these days. But they always did. In 2016 they added about 20 000, in 2018 about ...
402 views

### Rationale behind downvote button

First: as a new non-scientist member of Physics SE I want to say thank you for the wealth of knowledge, interest and patience with my ignorance I have encountered here. Second: I was very surprised to ...
• 1,153
73 views

### Is it possible to have the editor and preview in a side by side mode? Or maybe just a scrollbar in the preview?

I have a question about my Physics Stack Exchange post: A new way to define matrix-vector products, to relate physical fundamental constants and units of measure I'm trying to convert my post to ...
138 views

### The same question, little interest in the maths community and blind opposition here

I have a question about my Physics Stack Exchange post: A new way to define matrix-vector products, to relate physical fundamental constants and units of measure I wonder why such a question could ...
299 views

### Making others solve my problems..ok?

Sometimes I get problem ideas from real life. Is it OK to ask for a solution here, even though I would (probably) be able to solve it myself? As a disclaimer, those problems are weird enough to ...
103 views

### Dissociate an account from a question

I am thinking about turning my account in a professional one. However there are a few questions I asked in the past I would be a little bit annoyed if they would still be attached to my account. Is ...
77 views

My answer to a question was deleted under homework policy. The question didn't seem like homework. It was a genuine doubt why the user was getting a wildly different answer than the solution.
• 466
244 views

### Why are "big-list" questions no longer allowed?

I've recently seen the following (actually very long and well accepted) question on MathOverflow. Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics. Which I think is a great "question" and one ...
• 1,571
73 views

### Add a vote *not* to close button to counter the vote to close for questions that might have dissenting votes

To close a question that might be conceived to be against homework policy, or lacks clarity only 4 users need to vote to close it. But some obscure questions might be unclear to a majority of the ...
• 33.5k
110 views

### Why close an answered question when both answer and question have positive vote counts?

Especially when a user cannot delete their own question.
• 579
53 views

### How can I use the chat full transcript?

I had a few interesting chats years ago, and I remember some dates. I tried to trace them, but the full transcript can be scrolled back only one day at a time. Is there a reasonable way to read the ...
• 623
165 views

### Why is the question on wifi being a force being downvoted so much?

An hour ago, the question Can (and should) wifi internet be considered a force? was asked, and it already has 5 downvotes as of me writing this post. The absence of close votes suggests other users ...
• 7,876
400 views