Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
placeholder article
placeholder article

A Reflection on String Theory

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Chatham chapter.

Kaitlyn Shirey is a Physics student at Chatham. She shared this reflection on string theory – a beautiful, brief meditation on one of the coolest concepts in science!

String Theory is the most poetic piece of physics I have ever heard of.  Imagine that the tiniest things that exist, smaller than the quarks in the atoms in your cells, are strings – just immeasurably small strings.  This was described to me in comparison to a violin: In the same way that the vibrating strings of a violin create music, all that exists may be a product of the vibrating strings inside of our most basic particles.  In other words, you are a tune, and everything that you see and feel and hear is a cosmic composition, and you can think conscious thoughts because your brain is a concerto of the universe.  Your body is a choir.  The cacophony of your life is a masterpiece.  How will you spend your time differently knowing that today is a resonating melody?

What scientific concepts make you smile? Tell us in the comments!

Kaitlyn is a first year Physics and Creative writing double major at Chatham. Her interests include reading, running, and playing the ukulele.
  Mara Flanagan is entering her seventh semester as a Chapter Advisor. After founding the Chatham University Her Campus chapter in November 2011, she served as Campus Correspondent until graduation in 2015. Mara works as a freelance social media consultant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She interned in incident command software publicity at ADASHI Systems, gamification at Evive Station, iQ Kids Radio in WQED’s Education Department, PR at Markowitz Communications, writing at WQED-FM, and marketing and product development at Bossa Nova Robotics. She loves jazz, filmmaking and circus arts.