When I was starting out in Physics, I constantly wondered how on earth Physicists come up with equations—an amazement which I have observed is shared by so many non-physicists, because many have expressed that same puzzle when I became a physicist myself. It looks like magic from the outside. It also makes practitioners look like some sort of wizards capable of doing special things.

But I now want to articulate a simpler truth about the field. The intention is not to suggest that no effort or persistence is required to be able to play with equations, but to emphasize that it’s doable by anyone with enough curiosity and willingness to think clearly and legibly.

Equations in physics can be seen as characters in a story—a model or a conceptual scaffolding. In papers that start right off the bat with equations, it is often the case that they work within the existing story, like an episode in an ongoing serial. But papers that are dense in prose and then supply equations towards the end, or never do it until the next paper is written, are initiating a "story" for which the characters are not built yet. Just like in stories, equations are the carriers of identity—of what exists—of agency and change—of how things change, and of what is not possible—the constraints of the world.

Both kinds of physics papers are important, but the former tends to focus on the foundational aspects of physics, while the latter is the dominant mode in many technical papers that build on existing foundations.