Physics, technology, and society are interconnected. Sometimes Physics gives rise to technology and at other times technology gives rise to the new concepts of Physics and its benefit directly goes to our society. The development of technology proposes practical advancements whereas the development of Physics helps us in strengthening our understanding related to the world. An example is the wireless communication technology that followed the discovery of the basic laws of electricity and magnetism in the nineteenth century. As late as 1933, the great physicist Ernest Rutherford had dismissed the possibility of tapping energy from atoms. But only a few years later, in 1938, Hahn and Meitner discovered the phenomenon of neutron-induced fission of uranium, which would serve as the basis of nuclear power reactors and nuclear
weapons. Yet another important example of physics giving rise to technology is the silicon ‘chip’ that triggered the computer revolution in the last three decades of the twentieth century. The most significant area to which physics has and will contribute is the development of alternative energy resources. Considerable progress has already been made in this direction (for example, in the conversion of solar energy, geothermal energy, etc., into electricity), but much more is still to be accomplished.

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