Physics GRE Discussion Forums

does any one know where I can find some sample sops in Physics in the net. [just to get the idea]

You can get some at this site, however I don't see these samples as being very useful.

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~natalia/stu ... amples.htm

thanks alot, why do not you think these are not useful?

Firstly, if you look at a couple of different statements, you can find repeated sentences. I also don't think the way they introduce the student's interest in physics is very good, since it often starts with "When I was a boy..." Often it is impossible to explain why someone likes physics, usually it is just because they like physics!

Also, since that site is popular, I can imagine a lot of people take buzz lines from it and put it into their statements. You should avoid the style used in those essays so you avoid the problem of having your statements look like everyone else's.

ya , I definitely agree. actually , I was looking for some ideas to explain my interest in physics but I do not know how to explain it well . do you have any new idea? I myself describe my situation during my high school years.

I think this blog post (and the comments) has some fairly good and specific advice. You do not want to imitate the example SOP, though

valkyrie wrote:I think this blog post (and the comments) has some fairly good and specific advice. You do not want to imitate the example SOP, though

I love that blog! I also highly recommend the entries in FSP's recent Statement of Purpose contest (as examples of what not to write, of course).

http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2 ... try-1.html
http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2 ... e-sop.html
http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2 ... -sops.html
http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2 ... inued.html

@honey20

Out of curiosity, what interests you about physics? For example, is it a question like, why is the sky blue? Or, what happened at the beginning of the universe?

There are, of course, numerous reasons for being interested in some aspect of the physical world. In your case, if physics excites you, how would you try to get someone else excited about it too?

dont look at samples. Write your own SOP.

swepi wrote:@honey20
Out of curiosity, what interests you about physics? For example, is it a question like, why is the sky blue? Or, what happened at the beginning of the universe?

I thought the sky was blue due to rayleigh scattering. Beginning is a little harder.

cato88 wrote: I thought the sky was blue due to rayleigh scattering. Beginning is a little harder.

Sure, but at a deeper level, what is Rayleigh scattering? For example, is it caused by water vapor? If it is, then why are clouds white and not blue? In either case, the particles need to be around a tenth of a micron in size, smaller than a typical droplet of water vapor. Smoke, for example, will scatter blue and violet light more strongly, as do the feathers of some birds. This is all sort of tangential to the original topic of the thread and does not actually explain what Rayleigh scattering is or who Lord Rayleigh was. My point was to illustrate the difference between the name of something and what something is. Walter Lewin does a good job of explaining it either way: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02E ... mbed30.htm

Anyway, my comment toward honey20 was meant to inspire some thought about what got him/her into physics, and to what extent he/she would like to continue to explore the subject. I did look at a few sample SOPs at the link given in this thread back when I was writing mine, but didn't pay too much attention to them since I was more interested in trying to explain my own personal journey. I hope it works.

swepi wrote:

cato88 wrote: I thought the sky was blue due to rayleigh scattering. Beginning is a little harder.

Sure, but at a deeper level, what is Rayleigh scattering? For example, is it caused by water vapor? If it is, then why are clouds white and not blue? In either case, the particles need to be around a tenth of a micron in size, smaller than a typical droplet of water vapor. Smoke, for example, will scatter blue and violet light more strongly, as do the feathers of some birds.

I wrote a Python program that modeled the visible spectrum from the sun being scattered via Rayleigh scattering. It showed that the sky was blue, and as I changed the angle of the sun down to ninety-degrees predicted that the sky turns red. I used the diameter of molecular nitrogen as the size of the particle doing the scattering, and made the assumption that the sky is %100 Nitrogen. There is a ton of information on both Mie and Rayleigh scattering out on the Internet. Or, grab an upper level E&M text.