A note on the mentality of physicists

I work extensively with physicists these days. They are amazing, talented and creative people. But I have discovered an interesting feature. Physicists sometimes struggle with man-made devices. And I think I know the reason for it. They are trained to work with the unknown. With things without a user interface. Where you have to research to figure out what is going on. An many times what is going on is unknown or not well understood to start with.

This is in stark contrast to how man-made devices function. They are thought thru and if one can think of a useful feature, it is highly likely that someone before has thought of it and that that feature is implemented. But since physicists have limited experience with man-made devices, they often expect things to be more involved, complex and hard to deal with than what they often are. Hence they struggle.