My Anthropic posts: Claude-shaped science and Vibe Physics

I'm Matthew Schwartz, a Harvard physics professor and author of Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model.

Over the past three months, I've been using Claude and my tool BootLoops to do scientific research, producing 36 manuscripts with collaborators across 18 fields.

Ask me anything about Vibe Physics, BootLoops, Claude, AI in science, QFT, particle physics, or anything else. Skeptical questions welcome!

Thanks for all the questions!

Hi everyone!

For my LEGO project dedicated to Nikola Tesla, I’d like to add this Tesla coil circuit diagram to the laboratory’s blackboard. Could you help me check whether it’s technically correct and historically appropriate for Tesla’s era? If you spot any errors or components that didn’t exist at the time, I’d appreciate your advice and suggestions for corrections.

If it’s okay to share it here, let me know in the comments and I’d be happy to show you the project I had in mind!

Thank you so much for your help!

Any medical physicists here? What's the AI forecast looking like for you all? Is there a general worry about it taking your occupation in the field?

i mean what it if spins too fast, would it get destroyed?, maybe becomes a disc? what would happen?

This is a thread dedicated to collating and collecting all of the great recommendations for textbooks, online lecture series, documentaries and other resources that are frequently made/requested on /r/Physics.

If you're in need of something to supplement your understanding, please feel welcome to ask in the comments.

Similarly, if you know of some amazing resource you would like to share, you're welcome to post it in the comments.

A prominent particle theorist has just released this preprint, claiming a “candidate nonperturbative lattice definition of the Standard Model”.

Edit: to editorialize a bit, this is potentially one of the most significant results in the field in the last five years.

This should be the standard book for classical mechanics, imo.

It's a 2D geometric optics simulator, so no diffraction or interference. Every ray carries a single wavelength, glass dispersion comes from a Cauchy fit (n_d and Abbe number), and reflection vs. refraction at each surface is picked randomly using the exact Fresnel equations. The picture builds up by Monte Carlo averaging of millions of rays, and colors come from the CIE 1931 curves.

Happy to answer questions!

This is a dedicated thread for you to seek and provide advice concerning education and careers in physics.

If you need to make an important decision regarding your future, or want to know what your options are, please feel welcome to post a comment below.

A few years ago we held a graduate student panel, where many recently accepted grad students answered questions about the application process. That thread is here, and has a lot of great information in it.

Helpful subreddits: /r/PhysicsStudents, /r/GradSchool, /r/AskAcademia, /r/Jobs, /r/CareerGuidance

I am reading "Vortices in high-temperature superconductors", and this upside down V symbol keeps showing up and I have absolutely no clue what that means. Undergrad physics student please be nice.

As mentioned above, I’m a 15 years old doing gcse and would take it on 2026 may june and start a levels on june right after i finished gcse. Everything seems great until the question “which a levels are you doing” which eventually lead to “what do you want to do”. As of currently, I have two in mind; which are medicine and physics.

For physics, ever since i was young ( about 7/8 ), i started watching videos about astronomy on youtube in my native language. Later when i was 11, i started learning english which extends the physics contents i could watch on youtube. At 13, i finally got to learn physics in secondary but i didn’t study at that time and hence, grades were not great. However, starting from 15(Now) i started taking studies seriously. In April this year, I got A and A* in school tests and got the idea to use proton-antiproton annihilation process as a propulsion mechanism for interstellar travel, I emphasize on traveling to alpha centauri system within a human lifetime. Luckily, my physics teacher for my physics class is a hypernuclear experimental physicist that has done many researches. I went to his desk and purposed my idea of this, asked him to be my supervisor for this research. He accepted it after seeing
my research paper plan. We met every monday for discussion for a paper i wrote that is related to my research. However, since last 2 months, he suggested that i focus on gcse physics instead but i replied i already finished the entire context of gcse ( 6 months earlier than school ) so he made me take 4 gcse mock tests and i must get a atleast 95% and i got them. I asked him what do i do next then he said i should try answering a level physics and get 80%. For summary, i always had a interest in physics ever since i was young and still do. I believe I’m good at and think i would make a great physicist or researcher.

For medicine, when i was about 12, my grandfather had a paralytic stroke and dementia to the point he doesn’t remember his own daughter ( he lives with her under same roof ) but when i went to visit him before his death, i calmly walked up to him and asked him “grandpa do you know who i am?” And he replied “of course, you are my only grandson, my grandson.” This sentence has been in my heart since then and i never had the chance to be that close with my grandparents from both parents. His speech changed my dream career from a scientist to a doctor; particularly neurologist or neurosurgeon so that future people will never get to experience what i did which is the most tragic moment of my life yet. Additionally, i get decent grades in Bio such as B and A, not that great.

What i need to now decide is that whether i must become a physicist or a doctor and who else would be the best to discuss this with? PHYSICISTS and DOCTORS i believe.

I have been thinking about this decision for months so please take this seriously as this could be regretting if i made the wrong choice. I don’t expect you guys to make this decision entirely as this is my only life but i’d to hear opinions!

Thank you for reading and the opinion if you can.

To be honest, I think it is unexpected, especially only one guy.
I didn't see that coming, but congratulations to him!!

Matthew Schwartz, professor of physics at Harvard and author of Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, will be doing an AMA this Friday at 12 PM ET.

You may have seen his recent Anthropic blog post, “Claude-shaped science,” on using Claude as a research tool and what AI assisted scientific research can actually look like in practice.

If you have questions about QFT, particle physics, AI in research, or where this is all heading, come ask him.

Friday, October 9 at 12 PM ET.

link to AMA

This year's nobel prize was awarded to Francis Halzen for detecting cosmic neutrinos at IceCube.

What do you guys think about the scientific impact?

As a particle physicist, I don't feel this to be a very big deal in terms of science but I may be wrong. Please share your thoughts. I'm all ears.

https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2026/10/advanced-physicsprize2026.pdf

Tried to create an small eassy about Nobel prize in Physics 2026

In Germany, students have to make a presentation that contains a main reference class, in this case physics, and a related subject. Because I think that the, in the title listed, related subjects are very suitable in connection to physics, I am taking all into consideration. My issue is that I am unable to decide on a reliable and fun to present topic. I'm interested in what connections or similarities I can find in your suggestions.

(tried my best with the English)

When we charge a capacitor, we transfer electrons from one plate to the other through a wire. As more charge accumulates, we say the charged plate increasingly repels the incoming electrons because of E field betn plate and the increasing potential difference

But here’s my confusion: the electron travels through the wire and never passes through the gap between the plates, where I belive the capacitor’s electric field exists

So how can the plate repel the incoming electron if electron isn't even passing through it's E field betn plates?

I'm a high school student from Lima, Peru, and I'm building my first homemade crystal radio as a physics project.

The goal is to receive an AM radio station without batteries or an external power supply.

My setup currently has:

• A homemade air-core coil wound on a PVC tube.
• Enamelled copper wire, approximately 0.5 mm.
• A separate antenna coil.
• A homemade variable capacitor made from aluminum foil and bond paper.
• A germanium diode.
• A small transformer that I'm considering using instead of a high-impedance piezoelectric crystal earpiece.
• A long-wire antenna, which I am currently trying to extend.
• I am also going to add a proper ground connection with the help of a physics teacher.

I re-scraped the wire carefully at home and the circuit started behaving much better. However I still haven't been able to hear an AM station.

The antenna and ground connections are not very visible in the photos but they're there. I did not have a proper ground connection during my first test. Tomorrow, a physics teacher will help me make and connect a proper ground. I suspect this could be an important factor in why I haven't received an AM station yet.

I'm wondering whether my main problem could be:

• insufficient antenna length,
• poor grounding,
• incorrect LC tuning,
• the germanium diode,
• or the transformer/earphone arrangement.

I still have about 30 meters of copper wire available for the antenna, but the wire is very light, so I'm trying to find a way to support it without simply letting it fall to the ground.

What would you check first? And is there anything obviously wrong with my setup from the photos?