What is the scope of this community?
Sure, this community is for physics. Great! But... what does that actually mean? How broad is the scope? What is considered on-topic, and what are things that the term "physics" might include, but are actually off-topic here? I looked in the FAQ (which I spent a minute locating with my eyes), but that is as good as useless, quite literally:
This community is for anyone interested in physics of any type and at any level..
That's... not informative or helpful at all. It doesn't say anything about what questions I can actually post here. It doesn't list any limits.
How to ask a great question unfortunately only contains the generic description for any Codidact community, not anything specific to this one.
So... what is actually the scope of this community?
See also:
- Meta Codidact: How do we want to organize the help center?
1 answer
It's perhaps easier for me to say or suggest what the scope excludes than what it includes - the field and surrounding areas of physics are broad and not always well-defined in themselves.
In terms of what I may as well consider as 'type' of physics, in broad terms, I would generally classify a physics question into one or more of: computational; theoretical; and experimental.
A question related to any of these types should be on-topic but there are some boundaries - if a computational question is more about the programming aspect, it's likely off-topic. Similarly, a mathematical question shouldn't veer into pure maths (at minimum, there needs to be physically relevant details, ideally the question would be about those details and not just 'equation solving') and an experimental question shouldn't veer into engineering (which tends to be more about building/making things more relevant to solving real-world problems, although there is again a large grey area).
In terms of topic, there are too many to mention - to give some examples, astrophysics/cosmology, relativity, thermal and statistical, quantum, condensed matter, classical are all valid, well known sub-topics, but there are also interdisciplinary fields that should be on-topic, such as biophysics, medical physics, chemical physics and geophysics. However, biology, medicine, chemistry and geology are off-topic. There are other topics areas that are traditionally related to but not necessarily part of physics that a separate discussion may need to be had about, such as history and philosophy of physics and astronomy, although in the absence of any such discussion about or more appropriate location for such topic areas, I'm inclined to allow them (at least at present).
In terms of 'level', there is (at least at present) no 'minimum or maximum required level of question' requirement, I would say that questions at the level of research, graduate, undergraduate or school should be on topic. I would argue that questions relating to popular science discussions of physics should also be on topic. However, there is a requirement that an amount of effort appropriate to that level has been put into the question - if you ask a 'homework question' (which would most likely belong in the Problems category), you need to demonstrate that you've put effort into solving that question. 'Do my work for me' type questions are not allowed.
In addition, to make the explicit point, non-rigorous questions about personal, unpublished theories are not allowed. Questions about physics within a fictional world/universe that would otherwise be on-topic here would be better received in e.g. the 'Rigorous Science' category of Scientific-Speculation. Questions directly for ongoing exams/tests or competitions are also forbidden, until the exam/test or competition is over.
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