The first time I fell in love, I fell deep into its powerful clutches. It emerged from a passing infatuation, and grew uncontrollably into a creepy obsession. Destiny compelled us closer, until this love perpetuated my entire existence, breathing matter and energy into my life, quite literally. Inevitably, I have fallen madly in love with physics.
From the moment in which our worlds converged, physics was already exerting its strongly attractive force. I sighed through History and sulked through English in eager anticipation of the more fascinating physics postulates. Contrary to popular belief, physics is not just plug and chug equations; it requires inherent creativity and critical thinking skills to achieve the solution. Physics has propelled me through countless adventures, from the quest to save the flying gazelle in a kinematics problem, to the detailed investigation to find the missing resistor in a circuits puzzle. While many are quite frightened about the alleged difficulties imposed by this subject, I am not daunted by its complexities. In fact this is what makes physics so intriguing to me. The unknown and the confusing are not discouraging but the opposite; they encourage me to voice my burning questions in the classroom. Physics has coaxed me out of my reserved shell, empowering me to contribute to thought-provoking discussions with my teachers and peers.
In my daily life, the presence of physics lingers, inspiring me to contemplate the intricacies of ordinary activities. I observed an unpleasant lesson on momentum from the collision of a fly with the windshield of our family’s Honda, and experienced a painful session on thermal conductivity, after scorching my fingers on a hot iron stove. Examining my distorted, inverted profile in the convex mirror of my salad spoon provided an interesting example of light ray optics. Bernoulli’s principle presented itself to me while floating atop an inflatable tube in a water park. Balancing precariously atop a fluctuant see-saw at my neighborhood park granted me insight into the concept of torque. Physics is more than just formulas, Greek symbols, and diagrams in the pages of a textbook; it is all around us, waiting for its discovery and interpretation.
Probing deeper into the realm, I analyzed possible applications in medicine: How could computational bioinformatics be utilized in the modeling and prediction of disease progression? How could nanophotonic technologies be employed to diagnose neurodegenerative disorders? It turns out that physics also makes for a good topic of deep, philosophical discussion. I considered the finitudes and infinitudes and explored the ambiguities: Are their physical phenomena that irreversibly annihilate evidence about their prior states? How do genes govern the enormously complex human body, while withstanding internal stochasticity and external pressures? How does the quantum description of reality give rise to the reality we perceive?
Every moment, I am pondering the answers, solutions, and explanations to our universe’s obscure phenomena. Pattern recognition algorithms could be computed to analyze patient symptoms and vital signs during disease progression and could ultimately be utilized to develop predictive models for various illnesses. Sensitive nanoparticle-based methods could be developed to detect specific biomarkers that signify the loss of neurons and synapses during the onset of neurodegeneration. Perhaps wave function collapse or black holes are phenomena that destroy information about their prior quantum states. Quite possibly, the probabilities involved in the coding of human DNA aren’t as arbitrary as we believe it to be, and instead follow a secret set of biophysical rules.
Physics has ultimately cultivated my unfettered curiosity and has irreversibly shaped my exploratory perception. It has fueled my intense desire to explore beyond the frontiers of realistic thought, to reach past the “whats”, and instead chase the “whys” and scrutinize the “hows.” As an aspiring engineer, I dream of pursuing my passions and becoming a part of the innovative scientific community that will create solutions to our world's unsolved issues. In essence, I subsist on discovery and innovation.