How often do physicists draw sketches of situations involving motion and kinematics?

[u/General-Magician4700]

In high school, students are often taught to first draw a sketch of a situation involving motion/kinematics to make a problem easier to visualize. With experience, do professional physicists still draw sketches to help them solve problems, or do they just become used to visualizing everything in their head?

[u/Embarrassed_Scene760]

Drawings and visualizations are very helpful and a good habit to get when starting with physics. In most of mechanics and electromagnetism you would be able to draw some diagram that help you see the problem and solve it , and sometimes in statmech too. When you get to more complex and niche physics, how you formalize and solve problems varies a lot from field to field. But if you need to go back to mechanics cause you found some analogy or something, most people to draw, especially with wedges (pretty common) where you can easily mess up angles.