User:Littlerex

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

if anyone can explain the M theory or string theories and quantum grivity to me in small words i would be very grateful!

Hi Jessi,

Starting with a few disclaimers: 1) I'm not at all an expert in string/m-theory 2) String theory has not been verified by experiment and hence is not yet solid science. In fact, there has been a growing skepticism against string theory lately. 3) It's pretty complicated stuff. With that said, it's an extremely interesting topic and definitely worth studying. A good place to start is by learning some of the theories that have led up to string theory. Classical mechanics is probably the best place to start - this is what is usually taught in high school. After that quantum mechanics, special relativity and general relativity are all crucial to understanding modern physics. Learning about these topics in depth requires a great deal of mathematical sophistication. For classical mechanics - calculus, for quantum mechanics - linear algebra, and for relativity tensor calculus among other things. However, it is not necessary to learn all this math to learn a lot about the physics. There are many good popular science books out there that talk about the physics principles without using any math. If you want the math, then I would suggest studying some lecture notes that you can find through google. A really good book to start out with is Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. It talks about quantum mechanics, relativity, and string theory, and is very accessible. Good luck on your learning.

--Jcobb 10:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)