Brno, Czech Republic

Condensed Matter Physics

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: physical science, environment
University website: www.muni.cz/
Years of study: 4
Matter
In the classical physics observed in everyday life, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that we can touch are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic particles, and in everyday as well as scientific usage, "matter" generally includes atoms and anything made up of these, and any particles (or combination of particles) that act as if they have both rest mass and volume. However it does not include massless particles such as photons, or other energy phenomena or waves such as light or sound. Matter exists in various states (also known as phases). These include classical everyday phases such as solid, liquid, and gas - for example water exists as ice, liquid water, and gaseous steam - but other states are possible, including plasma, Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, and quark–gluon plasma.
Physics
Physics (from Ancient Greek: φυσική (ἐπιστήμη), translit. physikḗ (epistḗmē), lit. 'knowledge of nature', from φύσις phýsis "nature") is the natural science that studies matter and its motion and behavior through space and time and that studies the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, and its main goal is to understand how the universe behaves.
Matter
Matter is substance that may be perceived through the medium of the senses. It has form, colour, weight, taste, smell; is hard or soft, moveable, or immoveable. Those who are acquainted with the principles of Natural Philosophy, will perceive that some of these properties are inherent in matter, and that others depend on circumstances. The human body is a material substance; that is, it has the properties of matter—so has a stone or a rock.
Elizabeth Stryker Ricord, Elements of the Philosophy of Mind: Applied to the Development of Thought (1840)
Physics
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild (1931)
Physics
Theoretical physicists live in a classical world, looking out into a quantum-mechanical world. The latter we describe only subjectively, in terms of procedures and results in our classical domain.
John Stewart Bell "Introduction to the hidden-variable question" (1971), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 29
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