What drives this magazine is Albert Einstein’s wonderful thought: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” This magazine was started by two physics undergrads with two things in mind: firstly, to develop their own understanding of physics through journalistic science writing; and, secondly, to popularise physics by reducing the greek and the mathematics to a bare minimum where possible (although we sometimes do indulge ourselves with fairly rigorous maths).
Some may argue that taking the mathematics out of the picture trivialises physics; it does not. Physics has always been about interpreting the numbers involved, and to the common man, the numbers themselves means very little. In that regard, one things is clear: Physics Capsule is not a science journal. It is a source of physics — from high school level to contemporary research — for everybody interested in it regardless of how invested they are in the field. On a lighter note, as Stephen Hawking put it, “Someone told me that each equation I included in [my] book would halve the sales.”
Defining roots
In short, we enjoy explaining physics — to people, to ourselves, to our peers; and we enjoy listening to others, reading it and working things out. But not everybody can be bothered to do that.
Physics Capsule is, at best, a pulpit for anybody who wishes to speak on physics and an easy chair for anybody who wishes to listen. In spite of our desire to explain, however, we do not wish to pose as experts. We are not experts. We are learners with a commonn passion. The journey that is this magazine, therefore, is all about getting together with readers and learning together .
That is not to say we allow conjecture: all writing is fact-checked to be true at the time of publication. And all writing is open-ended to encourage healthy discussion.
The layout
Physics Capsule was born with a very particular idea in mind. The original roots of this magazine go back to another, much older one, The Scientific Papers , which once resided on the internet, carried a continuous stream of current physics development “in english and not maths”. This, sadly, no longer exists. But it has made way for a much better, larger venture in the form of this online magazine and has helped structure it better. Our scope is to cover all physics, from high school to the current frontiers of research . Physics Capsule should, in a way, also serve as a time capsule of everything related to physics that excites everyone who opens it. We thought the best approach to this would be to lay out the magazine by field, making it easy to navigate and easier still to make rounded sense of.
Further, we understand that not all types of writing appeals to all readers. Instead of dealing with this by restricting our writing, we have decided to adopt a rating-based indicator of the mathematical/scientific rigour of a piece of writing, making it easier for readers to judge not only whether they can comprehend the article, but whether they are interested in a deep examination at all.
The future
While we would like to say we have the complete route mapped for Physics Capsule, we really have only an outline in mind — but a strong outline nonetheless.
Whether this magazine will ever leave the internet is a matter of marketing rather than saving trees. We do not expect to see it in print unless demand for it grows; we certainly plan to take no steps towards making this demand grow.
We will, however, work towards making this available on a variety of platforms so more readers can access it from more devices and locations.
In general, we are willing to take this venture practically everywhere, with collaboration, growth, monetisation and wider publishing reach, all being part of our route map. We are constantly and actively working towards improving this magazine, and we intend to do this thoughtfully.
It is imperative that we take time to make decisions, especially long lasting ones. At the moment, starting off is our top priority, with high importance given to the quality of writing. We are discussing revenue streams and business plans, but those ought to go on in the background, not hinder the physics we put forth. (We will talk more about this later in this article.)
You
We welcome contributions to Physics Capsule right from the start. We really only look for accurate and lucid explanations of anything to do with physics. We appreciate humour, understand gravity and embrace serious commentary. Our aim is to provide a platform for everybody who has something to say, so long as it falls within our scope.
Contact us with a proposal for your article — a couple of sentences will do — and we will get back to you soon. You could, alternatively, attach or point us to the article itself (.doc, .docx, .pdf, .pages, .md, .txt, .rtf) and we will get back to you for publishing. Full details are available in the contribute section .
One of the cornerstones of Physics Capsule is our belief in involving the community, not just building one, which is why we encourage article submissions, subscriptions to our monthly digest and generally interacting with us everywhere possible, from Twitter to Google+ . You can also subscribe on platforms such as Flipboard, Feedly or Google Currents.
Business model
At the moment, all we want is a wide reach for Physics Capsule, to make it accessible to many people and keep articles free. This really means we are currently working on a slim investment, which ought to grow, of course, but expecting few returns. This is phase one.
As we grow, reaching phase two, we plan to incorporate advertisements for public viewers and preferably scrap advertisements for subscribers. However, we feel making articles paid goes against our intentions for building this magazine, so we intend to keep articles free, always.
Physics Capsule [serves] as a time capsule of everything related to physics.
Once again, owing to the fact that Physics Capsule is more the result of a passion than businesslike thinking, our sole intention for creating future revenue streams is to make up for the cost of running the magazine and not necessarily to make profits. Indeed we hope to be able to contribute any extra revenue right back to the magazine, to build it and take it to greater heights.
Thank you
We can hardly expect to see this magazine grow without the public’s interest in it. Having spoken to many people prior to the launch, it was great — and humbling — to find such an excited response. We have no doubt it will continue long, now that Physics Capsule has actually come off the paper, into existence.
It will take time for the magazine to grow, but is that not part of the fun? We also hope to see our team grow, to reach our target, make people enjoy Physics Capsule as much as they learn serious physics from it, and — however far into the future — perhaps accidentally stumble upon one of our readers. Perhaps you?
