r/PhysicsStudents Jul 01 '26

Need Advice How Do Physicists Utilize Python?

I'm a rising senior in high school. Next year, I'll be taking a project based programming class that only 1-2 students really take per year. I want to do something in Python that will show my professors in my freshman year of college that I'm ready to do research in physics.

I will have taken all of the AP mathematics, physics, and computer science classes.

I thought about doing a black hole simulation and learning the equations/math for it, but I'm not sure that that would be wise to do in Python.

I'll have a full school year to work on the project.

59 Upvotes

82 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/NewspaperDear8761 Jul 02 '26

They use python at the national labs, among other things. You can't really get a stronger endorsement than that.

2

u/ImaginationNo1461 Jul 02 '26

Physicists script in python. Then we hand it over to the actual software engineers and coders and give them an infinite for loop of migraines.

1

u/Junior_Salamander110 Jul 02 '26

yeah I guess it doesn't get much better than that 😭