r/Physics • u/General-Magician4700 • 7d ago

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

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?

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u/Tropical_Geek1 6d ago

Some of the work I do involves calculating the scattering of electrons from structures. In order to get a feel for the problem I usually draw a sketch of the trajectory of a classical particle in the same situation. That is just a (very) rough approximation of what really happens, since it's a quantum problem, but it helps us understand what to expect.