Questions tagged [discussion]

The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

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9 votes
1 answer
276 views

Experimental technology questions: on topic?

So far the scope of Physics Stack Exchange has been defined to exclude experimental technology questions, which are those questions about the devices that one uses to do physics, rather than about the ...
5 votes
2 answers
112 views

How appropriate are "I'm not sure of this" posts?

One of the great things about P.SE is that in the process of writing answers, I learn a lot. In this spirit, I've posted many answers which I'm not completely sure about, along with a hatnote stating ...
8 votes
1 answer
177 views

Physics logo sending confusing signals?

Am I the only one who thinks the physics logo says "sombrero" louder than it says "physics"?
0 votes
1 answer
30 views

What should one do when the community is undecided on a question?

Mainly in reference to Direction of rotation of proton in magnetic field--opposite to a dipole I recently asked a paradox question, and I got multiple answers that conflicted each other. The issue is ...
1 vote
1 answer
77 views

Is it "rude" to delete my own answer if it has a (physics) discussion below it?

I`d just like to know what other people generally think about this ...
3 votes
1 answer
530 views

Longest answer ever?

Just wondering: what is the longest answer ever given in physics.stackexchange.com ? Possible candidate: What if the LHC doesn't see SUSY?
3 votes
2 answers
245 views

What notation and symbols are commonly used here?

I just noticed that we have a new section on our FAQ about notation and symbols. What should go in this section? Obviously we can't explain all the mathematical notation that physics uses, but are ...
3 votes
0 answers
71 views

Comparison of Q&A Sites

What other Physics Q&A sites are there? How would you compare them to stackexchange? (Level of questions, size of user base, etc)
4 votes
1 answer
52 views

Chat Event: News and Discussion

In recent days, we've had a bunch of new (and not-so-new) users making great contributions to the site, and there has been a distinct uptick in meta activity. So I thought it would be a neat idea to ...
1 vote
2 answers
71 views

Is asking about the credibility of an (online) physics course/tutorial on-topic?

Questions that may fit this: 1, 2. There's a number of sources (e.g. 1, 2, 3) that claim to teach (some part of) physics, some of which seem questionable. If they are on-topic, should there be a tag?...
8 votes
3 answers
438 views

Ideas for 404/error/captcha pages, take 2

In conjunction with the new site design Jin has proposed, we may get to choose images to put on the 404 error and captcha pages. (I'm not sure if there are any other pages there are that we can ...
10 votes
0 answers
150 views

New New Design Launched

The "new new design" just went live, thanks for the feedback!. If you see any CSS glitches, please start a new post, and tag it with "Design" and "Bug" so I can track them easily. For now I'm using ...
2 votes
2 answers
273 views

Should "general reference" questions be closed on Physics SE?

There are a few recent questions ( Magnetic Susceptibility- Permeability and What is a Free Body Diagram? and How to compute drag coefficient given initial position, initial velocity and final resting ...
22 votes
6 answers
446 views

New Site Design

I'd like to present the community with a new final site design I've been working on. The goal is to keep the site clean and minimalistic, but at the same time give our physics site a unique branding. ...
3 votes
0 answers
79 views

Chat refuses to log me in; SOPA [closed]

I was going to put this in the chat room, but SE seems to miss my login credentials when I go to the chat room, so please spirit this to the chat room if possible and appropriate. I want to encourage ...
2 votes
1 answer
73 views

Should wrong answers be edited or replaced?

I've given a wrong answer to a question and I'm not too sure how to correct it. Should I: Acknowledge the correctness of the comments and completely re-edit it? Delete it and give a new correct ...
3 votes
0 answers
149 views

What's our official position on fictional physics?

It seems to have become de facto policy that questions about fictional physics are off topic, unless they're sufficiently precisely written. I recently realized that wasn't mentioned in our FAQ so I ...
7 votes
0 answers
376 views

Introducing Stack Exchange Research Support and Fellowship Program

The mission of Stack Exchange is to make the internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions. The Stack Exchange Fellowship Program aims to support students conducting research in ...
7 votes
2 answers
212 views

Should I post a question if I know the answer? Should I answer my own questions?

Recently I had some questions and was going to post them here. While trying to find the best formulation for them I've found the answers. Posting questions with immediate answers is welcome e.g. on ...
1 vote
1 answer
86 views

Objective criteria of "do my homework" questions

In the FAQ it is said that "do my homework" questions are not welcome on physics.stackexchange. So far I was sure that I know what are that questions: Formulation of some non-conceptual problem: "...
3 votes
1 answer
190 views

Can we burninate the "paradox" tag?

paradox doesn't help characterize the physics content of a question. Sure, there are some questions that deal with (apparent) paradoxes, but I think it's enough that the question title or body ...
4 votes
0 answers
53 views

What are the best questions that could be turned into science fair projects?

I just came across this post: Cooling a cup of coffee with help of a spoon and think it would make a great science fair project for elementary and middle school students. Are there other physics ...
0 votes
2 answers
50 views

Do questions about modeling charges in programming fit here?

At electronics.SE we received this question: Representing charges in computer programming The gist of the question comes from this paragraph: How can electric charges be represented in terms of ...
3 votes
1 answer
162 views

Down-voting questions: Please state your rationale

Why do you down-vote a question? For example. In my view, the so called "bad" questions are due to misconceptions of the OP. They may be ill-formulated, but I feel it is more productive to edit the ...
4 votes
3 answers
216 views

Are "What are some intersting Foo problems?" questions off-topic?

Two recent questions from one user What are some interesting calculus of variation problems? What are some interesting coupled harmonic oscillators problems? From my point of view these are "make a ...
3 votes
1 answer
105 views

Are Higgs rumours increasing the traffic in physics websites, particularly SE?

This is sort of meta, so here it is: Have admins noticed, in the last three weeks, an increasing of traffic into StackExchange coming from searches for higgs related topics? And a subtopic of it, ...
1 vote
0 answers
29 views

Help us call for proposals for the SE Fellowship on your blog, site or listserv

The SE Research Support and Fellowship Program launched recently with our very own experienced and highly respected users reviewing fellowship applications. To make the program a success, we need ...
9 votes
5 answers
467 views

Improving signal/noise ratio

Lubos Motl has fairly complained that the site has had an unfortunate number of questions which are of a pop-sci philsophical flavor (Why is there something rather than nothing? What came before the ...
7 votes
0 answers
74 views

Upcoming journal editions: read 'em and ask on the Stack (and get prizes)

As the new monthly issues of your favorite journals are published, we want to remind you to ask those burning questions that pop into your head as you read through novel approaches, methods and ...
4 votes
2 answers
141 views

Does the Area 51 proposal “High Energy Physics” overlap with this site?

Similar to my question Does the Area 51 proposal "Experimental or Applied Physics" duplicate this site? (which could still use a consensus—hint, hint …) There's an Area 51 proposal named ...
8 votes
3 answers
490 views

Does the Area 51 proposal "Experimental or Applied Physics" duplicate this site?

A new Area 51 proposal "Experimental or Applied Physics" was recently created. While I've looked at your FAQ, I don't know the field well enough to be comfortable making the call on my own—which ...
16 votes
7 answers
536 views

Are stingy ratings just due to the nature of physics?

I've noticed a major difference between the physics SE and the other SE sites. People here are mean! Comparatively, the other sites feel like a smorgasbord of up-voting. I understand that the ...
2 votes
2 answers
98 views

Question about a not well-known researcher (Depalma Free Energy fields)

Today I had a question closed, about some researches of Dr. Bruce de Palma, in Depalma Free Energy fields. The reason of closing the question was "This work bears all the hallmarks of being completely ...
3 votes
2 answers
112 views

Shall I direct questions here?

Every now and again we get good questions in the new theoretical physics site, which are nevertheless not part of our mandate. Those are questions that are not directly research-related, perhaps they ...
2 votes
2 answers
141 views

why was this question closed?

Why was we don't serve tachyons around here closed? To me is seemed on topic because it asked about the physics in a joke that only physicists would appear to understand.
2 votes
2 answers
118 views

Is this an example of a good electrical question on Physics?

Questions like this one are potentially on-topic on Electrical Engineering. However, that question is a little too basic for most of our users, and we don't get a lot of homework questions as it seems ...
8 votes
6 answers
696 views

How basic is too basic?

My own daughter asked - only two days ago - "What is physics"? While that may be a little too simple - there's plenty of definitions easily available - how simple can (or should) we go on this site?
5 votes
0 answers
79 views

Stack Exchange Fellowship and Grant Program: Looking for reviewers to assess thesis proposals

Stack Exchange will be introducing a Fellowship Program awarding grants for original and independent research projects. Undergraduate Honors Theses, Independent Study Projects, Masters Theses, and ...
12 votes
0 answers
568 views

Theoretical Physics SE - a place for research-level questions

Just recently, Theoretical Physics - Stack Exchange has entered the open beta phase. It is a research-level question site, so we aim at questions that cannot be answered by a standard textbook. We ...
4 votes
0 answers
159 views

Introducing Physics.SE University Ambassadors Program: calling students and teachers

StackExchange is looking for students and teachers who might be interested in helping us kick off/formalize a university pizza ambassador-type program. Physics.StackExchange would like to sponsor ...
5 votes
0 answers
132 views

Who is this person with a Ψ character and what is the CHAOS team?

Just like to drop a note on who I am and what my team does. I'm Seth, a member of the CHAOS (community development and evangelism) team at SE headquarters in New York. We're in the SE sites learning ...
3 votes
2 answers
255 views

Deleting comments without consensus

David Zaslavsky has gone about wanting to delete substantive discussions in the comments surrounding certain answers: Does Gödel preclude a workable ToE? Reproducing the OPERA result He has ...
3 votes
1 answer
150 views

Questions about student-level problems

Yesterday we had a question, Probablistic problems in physics?, which I initially closed, but (as Ron pointed out) perhaps I shouldn't have. My reasoning was that: these questions, or at least their ...
5 votes
0 answers
98 views

Astronomy / Physics discussion on topic distinction

We've had some sporadic discussions about how to determine the topic boundary between Astronomy.SE and Physics.SE and what kinds of questions should be transferred over to the astro site. They've also ...
4 votes
1 answer
108 views

Questions concerning a career in research on or off topic?

I have a question about research careers, or rather PhD programmes but I'm not sure if it is on or off topic. From several threads here on meta I gathered that there is no general consensus on these ...
4 votes
1 answer
91 views

"how things work" tag?

Now that the how-things-work site has been closed and in spite of some people wishing to raise the standard, there are a number of questions about the physics of how things such as common machines and ...
3 votes
1 answer
377 views

Why has Marek stopped contributing?

Do the moderators have any idea why the user Marek has suddenly stopped contributing to physics stack exchange? I really miss his brilliant answers and I'm just wondering if Lubos posting about him ...
2 votes
2 answers
202 views

This question is obvious spam

This question is spam, it is written by a phony user, it is phrased in an obvious attempt to grab attention, using silly profane acronyms that you have to decipher, but it is asking a legitimate ...
6 votes
1 answer
50 views

Ambiguity in the [color] tag

Nine questions were tagged color. Of these seven related to the perceptual values of different frequencies of visible light, and two related to the characteristic charge of the strong nuclear force. ...
2 votes
1 answer
44 views

What to do with tide related tags

I noticed tidal.force today. Now clearly, that have a . where we expect a -, so it needs to be fixed, but what should the tag ...