theory - Supersymmetry by Arcade Fire (alternatively: Symmetry by Wye Oak)
“When you ask what are electrons and protons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave, how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to the game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what chessman is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessman has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game of chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen.” – Paul A. M. Dirac
having competitions with your friends to see who can write the best Greek characters. staying up late working on code. rewarding yourself by using a piece of hagoromo chalk on the next problem, enjoying its smooth glide across the blackboard. breaking everything you touch in a physics lab. admiring the beautiful symmetry in and of the universe.
experiment- Default by Django Django or Glamorous Damage by GUM
“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” – Galileo Galilei
clean data with good statistics and high precision is manna from the gods. the image of oscilloscopes with fountains of wires spilling from them fills you with peace. spending extra time in the lab, not due to pressure from your PI, but because you’re so absorbed in your project. calling the peaks in your spectrum “little guys” and “big guys”. the feeling of finally taking usable measurements. you enjoy error propagation too much.
nuclear - Physics by Wild Front
When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all—except life. We shall have found the basis of everything—of the earth we walk on, of the air we breathe, of the sunshine, of our physical body itself, of everything in the world, however great or however small—except life. – Ernest Rutherford
repeatedly dispelling the notion that your work relates to warheads or power generation. absolutely losing it over football-shaped nuclei. having another emotional breakdown because ROOT decided it didn’t like the way you write in C++. all-nighters spent in the control room of the accelerator (during your only experiment this year!), consuming frightful amounts of caffeine and laughing deliriously with your group members. going home afterwards, sleeping deeply, then returning to the lab the next day to do it all over. respectfully swooning over Maria Goeppert Mayer.
astro/cosmology - Planets and Stars by Pavvla (or Dark Waves by Robot Koch)
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” – Galileo Galilei
regularly stumbling as you walk home because you’re squinting at the barely visible Pleiades. your version of asmr is listening to the blip of a neutron star merger detected by LIGO. attending chilly community telescope nights in the hills outside your city, inviting children come up and peer into the refractor that you’ve angled at Jupiter. fervently explaining how we are the byproducts of stellar nucleosynthesis at a party.
particle - Higgs Boson Blues by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics.” – Sheldon L. Glashow
dreaming of discovering a force carrier for gravity. or measuring neutrino mass. or observing dark matter. you get indignant when people claim your work is just fanfiction of the standard model, but only because it’s true. staying up late into the night thinking about the weirdness of discretized time and space. carrying your worn copy of the PDG particle physics booklet with you, just in case. hoping for accessible energy levels in the experiment you’re cooking up.
condensed matter - Quantum Physics by Ruby Waters (also Polychromatic by Castelle)
“No matter what you look at, if you look at it closely enough, you are involved in the entire universe.” – Michael Faraday
not only describing how matter behaves, but manipulating its behavior to suit your needs. teasing your nuclear friends about the practical applications of their research. the simultaneous mundanity and excitement surrounding the materials you study. setting up a miniature lab space in your kitchen and embracing the strange looks from your household. randomly finding transistors in the bottom of your bag or tucked into a pocket. being an absolute fanatic about microcontrollers, jerry-rigging pieces of lab equipment with them on the cheap.
please don’t take this as a prescription for your behavior; being a physicist isn’t about performing for others. it’s about gaining and creating new knowledge surrounding the behavior of the universe. if you enjoy that and want to immerse yourself in it, all the better :)
