The purpose of this simple post is to bring to attention a view of physics which isn’t often communicated in introductory courses: the view of physics as optimization. This approach begins with a quantity called the action. If you minimize the action, you can obtain a path of least action which represents the path a physical system will take through space and time. Generally speaking, physicists use analytic tools to do this minimization. In this post, we are going to attempt something different...