In this post, we’ll be discovering the difference between physics and geography. In addition mention some facts and tips related to physics and geography.
What is the difference between physics and geography?
Physics and geography are two completely different majors, in geography students take courses related to the earth, geology, hydrology, and environmental engineering. While in physics majors students focus on topics that explain matter and energy. it includes all the topics like matter, electricity, the universe, atoms, geography, etc.
what geographers do
in geography major, you will be focusing on topics that relate to the earth and human behavior on the earth, for instance, you discover:
- what is the story of the earth
- how humans change their environment
- determine the geographic coordinates of cities around the world
- predict the climate change in the world
- physical environment including land, rivers, volcanic, soils
For instance, in geography science, you will study and try to understand why some plants are growing only in specific places around the world.
Let’s take an example of bananas:
Geography science tells us that bananas grow in Guatemala, Brazil, and Costa Rica but why it is impossible to grow bananas in CANADA or the UK. So geographic scientists said that bananas require:
Medium temperature weather ⇒ the temperature must be between 18 degrees and 35
Rainy weather ⇒ rains density has to be between 70 centimeters and 200 centimeters
Adaptive soil ⇒ have solid is rich of potassium due to volcanic activations
When we compare these characteristics we find that these countries are meeting these requirements to successfully plant bananas in their countries. You can’t expect to grow bananas in the UK with cloudy and cold weather.
So this is one example of what geographers do in their job.
So geographers study what happens in the world, and what the differences are between each part of the world. You will have to make a lot of travels and discoveries around the world.
what do physicists do?
The job of a physicist is completely different, you will be spending most of your time in laboratories or between books and essays solving theoretical physics equations. physicists are two types:
- theoretical physicist
- experimental or applied physicist
A theoretical physicist is a person who focuses on theoretical physics topics like Albert Einstein who invented the relativity theory. Typically theoretical physicists study some complex topics about the universe including cosmology, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, etc.
An applied physicist is a person who mixes theory and practice, is a kind of physicist who solves theoretical physics problems and employs them in different engineering aspects.
For instance applied physicists are the people who invented lasers, and transistors and solved difficult problems engineers can’t do.
As a physicist you could be engaging in many different projects, for instance, physicists work together with engineers to design rockets and spaceships, they use their math knowledge and background in physics to create a metal that can resist a high temperature and pressure when the ship go out or back to the atmosphere, also creating powerful fuel systems to propel the rockets.
what student study in geography
In geography majors you will be studying theses following topics:
- human geography like how people are distributed around the world
- environment geography discovering the diversity of raw materials and ecologist systems around the world
- physical geography including climatology, geomorphology, hydrology, and biogeography;
- geographic information science including spatial analysis using GIS, remote sensing, and cartography
what students study in physics
As a physics major, you will be covering physics and math topics like
- math (calculus, differential equations, linear algebra)
- thermodynamics (the science of heat and energy)
- classical mechanics ( the science behind the objects we manipulate )
- quantum mechanics ( the science that explains difficult and unresolvable topics by classical mechanics)
Physics is math involved and more difficult for students who are not good at math, while geography is not a very oriented math major, geographic majors study easier math topics like statistics and algebra.
Is there physics in geography?
geography does not involve physics in most of its curriculum, There are no physics courses in geography bachelor programs. You will discover physics if you decide to minor in physical geography studying topics like classical mechanics and thermodynamics, in addition to some electricity, magnetism, waves, and sound.
In physical geography, you will be using these physics topics for studying environment geographies, like soil, vegetation, and climate.
In other geography majors, you don’t need physics, you will just have to focus on environmental topics like geology, hydrology, and topics we mentioned in the previous paragraph.
how physics and geography are related
Geography is related to physics in a part of physical geography that studies the physics science about the earth. Geographists must have basic physics knowledge about gravity, forces, pressures, compression, dilations, etc.
In physical geography, scientists use physics laws like thermodynamics, to determine how the weather is cooling or getting hot, and magnetism to study the magnetic field around the earth. In addition to physics topics related to waves and sound like how sound is spreading in different geographic places.
Physical geography focuses so much more on math than physics, having basic knowledge or a high school physics level is enough to tackle geography major courses.