Physics, translated from ancient Greek, is “nature”. Physics is a field of natural science, the science that studies the most fundamental regularities determining the general structure and the evolution of the material world. As one of the three pillars on which the modern system of the world order rests, physics is the science of nature in the very broadest sense of the word! Besides the fact that it studies the material and energy parameters of the organisation of the universe, it also sets itself the task of explaining and giving a logical justification for the fundamental interactions in nature that govern the motion of matter.In fact it is physics that is the main engine of the technical progress of humanity as a whole. Without belittling the merits of other branches of scientific thought in this, one still wants to mention such very great geniuses of the human race as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla and so on, and so on. It is physicists who allowed humanity not simply to take a step in the direction of its technical development, but to make a giant leap!!!
Over the last 100 years man has mastered the energy of the atom, brought electricity into every sphere of life everywhere, created the thing without which you would not have been able to read these lines – the internet, conquered the air and the water and begun to explore the underwater space of our planet. He has created super-strong materials with properties unheard of hitherto, computing machines that perform billions of logical operations a second, penetrated the boundless depths of the human brain, seen the tiniest inhabitants of our planet, which we now call viruses, learnt to grow and transplant human organs artificially, and burst beyond the limits of the atmosphere of the planet Earth. There is no listing it all. But even this, I think, is enough to understand in full measure just what physical science is.
A question may arise: what do you need physics for? Let us permit ourselves to answer it with a question again: and what does a centipede need legs for, or birds wings, or plants the sun? Quite right – because they cannot do without any of it!!! :) Physics today is more necessary to us than ever before. After all, you use the laws of physics every day, in your everyday life…- when you cook food, watch television or simply luxuriate in the bath. The laws of Archimedes, the laws applied in optics, or the physical laws from the section on hydrodynamics and gas dynamics have become something so ordinary for us that we simply no longer pay them any attention, and that is a pity…Physics is first of all the chance for a person to come to know the world around him as deeply as possible, to put the system of his perception of the world in order and to realise that he is an inseparable part of it!
Physical science is all-embracing in its striving to encompass as much as possible and to describe in as much detail as possible whatever comes into the field of view of its apologists, and so it can with every right lay claim to the honourable title of the queen of the sciences!