In her short animated documentary Why Do I Study Physics?, Xiangjun Shi finds beauty in both the orderly world of physics and the chaos of real life. Touching on concepts as diverse as gravity, time and parallel universes, she offers a personal response to the fundamental questions that physicists are trying to answer.
Maybe I’m not even here, and other crazy, beautiful stuff physics told me
Director: Xiangjun Shi

videoHistory of ideas
Splitting the truth: the philosopher that physics forgot
4 minutes

videoMathematics
Against ‘beauty’ in science – how striving for elegance stifles progress
9 minutes

videoQuantum theory
Why aren’t our everyday lives as ‘spooky’ as the quantum world?
7 minutes

videoPhysics
Imagining spacetime as a visible grid is an extraordinary journey into the unseen
12 minutes

videoPhilosophy of science
Richard Feynman on why science adds beauty in the Universe: it does not subtract
5 minutes

videoPhysics
This clever and stylish 1960 film is the most fun you’ll ever have at a physics lecture
27 minutes

videoQuantum theory
Mind-bending new quantum experiments are blurring past, present and future
10 minutes

videoMetaphysics
‘The whole thing is a monstrosity!’ How a symmetry heretic sees the Universe
8 minutes

videoCosmology
‘I want you to live forward, but see backward’: a theoretical astrophysicist’s manifesto
4 minutes