Why physics students are optimists

Physics students are taught to look to the future, so are naturally optimistic; economics students learn from mistakes of the past – no wonder their world is full of gloom

The optimism of physics students seems to know no bounds, and I should know. I speak as someone who happily sat on a coach for 21 hours to witness what is, in the nicest possible terms, a hole in the ground.

The – admittedly very high tech – hole I visited with 30 or so fellow students is the future site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), a project to harness the power of nuclear fusion. Ambitious projects like these, and my excitement to see them in progress, reflect the optimism of physic students themselves.

Science teaches you to look forward, to find solutions, and to work things out. My coursemates and I live in a secure world where solutions look apparent, because we are taught to be inquisitive.

The Iter project that I saw on my uni trip won't be completed until 2030, if we're lucky. But our willingness to visit the site shows the sunny side of science students. Projects like Iter fill us with enthusiasm.

I once went with two economics students to the European Central Bank, which I'd thought would be their equivalent of Iter. Instead, it was patiently explained to me that the ECB should "never have been formed in the first place", and that the experiment of fiscal union had been a crushing failure.

The more we explored Germany, the more it became apparent that their outlook as a whole was very different from mine. Physics students have seen science solve problems and believe it can continue to do so; economics students dwell on the dismal effects of mistakes economists have made in the past.

When we visited the Iter site, it was made clear to us that nuclear fusion will not be our get-out-of-the-energy-crisis-free card; it's not going to solve all our problems. But physics students find it hard to kick a nagging belief that technology will sort most things out in the end.

We're optimistic about our personal futures too. Other students need to focus on getting work experience in order to get a job; science has perceived job security. And anyway, we're engrossed in our studies. Lots of us aren't even thinking about jobs yet.

I love being around people who discussing light-sabres and nuclear-powered space-planes– though I admit that students studying other subjects, economics even, may well have a better sense of the real world.

Our positivity may make us seem naive. But as physics students our job is to strive to justify our optimism one day.

On our Iter trip, heads shot up when a Nobel prize was mentioned. We know we won't get one, of course, but we all hope we will. That sums us up really.

(Source: The Guardian)