Fundamental Science and Improvement of the Quality of Life---Space Quantization to MRI

This is more of a presentation rather than an essay, but still, I think everyone can clearly get the message. It presents a compelling argument on why basic, pure science research is important, and in fact, is the "goose" that will lay the golden egg. It illustrates this by using the timeline in the development of the MRI technique that is so prevalent in medical sciences. It started with "... the quantum mechanical concept of space quantization and intrinsic spin... " that led to "... totally unanticipated practical improvements to the Quality of Life".

In fact, one can pluck the whole of QM and the whole of Special Relativity to show that back then, no one could anticipate what these two areas of study would bring. To me, the most effective means of countering these people who argue about the "waste of money" invested in basic sciences is to simply show several different chains of discoveries that started off with something rather innocuous and ended with an important practical application. Nothing falsifies a claim more definitively than showing a clear example like that. This is one this article has tried to do.

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Balloons and Liquid Nitrogen

Here's one way to inflate your party balloons.



This is probably what Carl should have used to release all those balloons he attached to his house (re: the movie "Up").

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Measuring the Speed of Light Using Beating Longitudinal Modes in an Open-Cavity HeNe Laser

I love these kinds of experiments. They can be done in an undergraduate setting, the equipment isn't too expensive or complicated, and you get very accurate results. In this case, they measured the speed of light in air, and the experiment is accurate enough to distinguish that measured speed with the speed of light in vacuum.

Abstract: We describe an undergraduate laboratory that combines an accurate measurement of the speed of light, a fundamental investigation of a basic laser system, and a nontrivial use of statistical analysis. Students grapple with the existence of longitudinal modes in a laser cavity as they change the cavity length of an adjustable-cavity HeNe laser and tune the cavity to produce lasing in the TEM$_{00}$ mode. For appropriate laser cavity lengths, the laser gain curve of a HeNe laser allows simultaneous operation of multiple longitudinal modes. The difference frequency between the modes is measured using a self-heterodyne detection with a diode photodetector and a radio frequency spectrum analyzer. Asymmetric effects due to frequency pushing and frequency pulling, as well as transverse modes, are minimized by simultaneously monitoring and adjusting the mode structure as viewed with a Fabry-Perot interferometer. The frequency spacing of longitudinal modes is proportional to the inverse of the cavity length with a proportionality constant equal to half the speed of light. By changing the length of the cavity, without changing the path length within the HeNe gas, the speed of light in air can be measured to be ($2.9972 \pm0.0002) \times 10^{8}$ m/s, which is to high enough precision to distinguish between the speed of light in air and that in a vacuum.

But I think, equally as important, is the skill that the students could gather out of something like this.

This experiment exposes students to a variety of experimental and mathematical techniques, demonstrates the importance of uncertainty in measurement, provides a meaningful context for using weighted regression, and familiarizes the student with three ubiquitous instruments: the laser, the Fabry-Perot interferometer, and the RF spectrum analyzer.

Those are skills that can't be taught, but rather, acquired.

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Radioactive Half-life Experiment

A series of educational videos from Jefferson Lab on a simple experiment to measure the half-life of a radioactive substance. I think I've seen first year undergraduate lab experiments that resemble something like this, so this should be educational to many students.















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Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids

This is a book for kids in middle elementary school to introduce them to Isaac Newton and basic mechanics. There is a brief review of it on Wired.

This year I asked Chicago Review for a review copy of their book Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids. Even though my kids are beyond the target age, I thought it might be a useful reference for our physics homeschool studies this year. (Tip to homeschooling parents: If you want to bone up quickly on a topic, try reading a high-quality middle-grade book. Most times you’ll get all the information you need to get started, without overwhelming amounts of detail.) What I found was an excellent biography on Newton that touched on his physics discoveries but didn’t really focus on them. Nonetheless, it is an excellent book for those who want to read about this eccentric and brilliant thinker.

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The Sum of All Thrills

The Sum of All Thrills is an attraction inside Innoventions East at Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park. What it does is try to combine a minor lesson in basic kinematics with designing your own thrill ride (half-pipe sled, roller coaster, or jet fighter). Then, after you've finished designing it, you get to ride it in a cool ride simulator.

Unfortunately, the attraction emphasized that these are "engineering" problems. While it is true that designing a roller coaster, for example, can be an engineering problem, these are also physics problems. The basic kinematics of finding the velocity needed to climb up a hill or to complete a loop is basic stuff that we encounter in a physics class. So they could have included that fact with no additional costs. Also, you are given only 2 minutes to design your ride, which is understandable because you want the crowd to move on and not linger too long before the next group comes in. But because of that, you don't pay attention to the kinematics (they display the kinematics equation on the screen when you're designing your ride). So the "learning" value isn't captured here too much.

They also have a website you can go to to continue with your thrills. You can design your ride and win points by answering a few math questions and by clicking on fun facts and trivia.

All in all, it is a fun attraction. In fact, I would say that it is the best attraction inside of the Innoventions pavilions. It is just that the educational content could be a little bit stronger. But then again, people coming here are on vacation. Do they want an education on basic kinematics?

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Dark Matter: A Primer

This is a very useful review on the phenomenology of Dark Matter. It has a good review on the early and most recent evidence in support of the existence of dark matter. At the very least, it is convenient to have all of the references in one place for easy look-up.

Abstract: Dark matter is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in cosmology at the present time. About 80% of the universe's gravitating matter is non-luminous, and its nature and distribution are for the most part unknown. In this paper, we will outline the history, astrophysical evidence, candidates, and detection methods of dark matter, with the goal to give the reader an accessible but rigorous introduction to the puzzle of dark matter. This review targets advanced students and researchers new to the field of dark matter, and includes an extensive list of references for further study.

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P.A.M. Dirac and the Discovery of Quantum Mechanics

A thoroughly entertaining manuscript by Kurt Gottfried on P.A.M. Dirac and his contribution to the non-relativistic quantum mechanics. So unlike the biography of Dirac, this article focuses on a very narrow period of his life, but I think we get a lot more in-depth look.

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Finding Heroes In Science And Engineering

A very spot-on article by Larry Bock on the need to expose kids to not only the field of science and engineering, but also to the people who are scientists and engineers.

In the study, Moseley and Norris examined the drawings and verbal impressions of 550 current and soon-to-be K-8 teachers about scientists. Although the researchers found that study participants described scientists as intelligent, hardworking and theoretical, many also described them as impersonal, boring and nerdy. Participants also generally portrayed scientists as stern, bespectacled older white men with unfashionable clothes and unkempt hair, and who worked alone.

A teaching student in the study, after reflecting on her drawings and verbal comments, said, these perceptions are "supplied to us by the movie industry and the media. I remember many times as a child watching cartoons or movies that portrayed a scientist much the same as mentioned above. It may seem like an unfair generalization, but then stereotypes usually are."

Such a perception is consistent with what we see in the drawings of scientists done by kids. Such perception can easily be corrected by exposing people to scientists and engineers, and what they do. It is why whenever I read about some open house or festivals where the public can actually get to see and interact with scientists, I try to highlight them here. These are the few opportunities for people to not only see and learn about the research work being done, but to actually get to see the people who do them and, hopefully, dispel some of those stereotypes.

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A Triumph for TRIUMF

More update on the issue of a severe shortage of medical isotopes, something that I've mentioned before. It appears that the TRIUMF facility in Canada will get its funding to build an accelerator that will, among other things, generate these needed medical isotopes.

A $63-million accelerator, billed as one of the most powerful in the world, will get the go-ahead Tuesday morning at TRIUMF, the national physics lab based in Vancouver.

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is set to announce $30.7 million for the project, which could help alleviate future medical-isotope shortages. The Canada Foundation for Innovation has committed $18 million and the remaining $14 million is to come from core federal funding for TRIUMF.

Pay attention to the fact that this is a clear non-high energy physics use of a particle accelerator.

The news report did say something rather puzzling, though, right in the very first sentence.

Canadian scientists hope to beam the country to the forefront of nuclear and isotope research with intense, high-powered light.

Er... I thought they do this by slamming protons or electrons into a target? Where did the "high-powered light" come from?

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No Supersolid Yet?

Another wrench has been thrown into the claim of experimental observation of supersolids. A new paper in PRL[1] is throwing doubt into such observation, and in fact, attribute the apparent observation to quantum plasticity.

Looks like a lot more work needs to be done to verify if we truly have a supersolid in such a system.

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[1] J. D. Reppy Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 255301 (2010).

Bose-Einstein Condensation in Microgravity

A very cool {pun not intended} experiment of using BE condensate in a "microgravity" environment.

T. van Zoest et al., "Bose-Einstein Condensation in Microgravity", Science v.328, p.1540 (2010).

Abstract: Albert Einstein’s insight that it is impossible to distinguish a local experiment in a "freely falling elevator" from one in free space led to the development of the theory of general relativity. The wave nature of matter manifests itself in a striking way in Bose-Einstein condensates, where millions of atoms lose their identity and can be described by a single macroscopic wave function. We combine these two topics and report the preparation and observation of a Bose-Einstein condensate during free fall in a 146-meter-tall evacuated drop tower. During the expansion over 1 second, the atoms form a giant coherent matter wave that is delocalized on a millimeter scale, which represents a promising source for matter-wave interferometry to test the universality of free fall with quantum matter.

A Perspective article on this work can also be found in the same issue of Science. I also found what appears to be a presentation viewgraphs on this work by one of the authors of the paper. But what is even cooler is that Wired has an article on this that includes a video of the drop.



I only wish that Wired didn't go along that sensationalistic approach by making the suggestion that Eintein's equivalence principle has been shown to be wrong. No such thing was done here. As with many other advancement in accuracy, it simply opens the door for us to test something more precisely. If and when we find discrepancy between measurement and theory, only THEN do we start making the suggestion that something isn't fully kosher here. But not before then.

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Do Advanced Physics Students Learn From Their Mistakes Without Explicit Intervention?

The scenario is rather intriguing. You have a group of advanced physics majors (a few being seniors about to graduate) in a honors QM class. You have them a number of questions for a Midterm exam.

Then, after a few weeks, you give them another exam, but using the identical set of questions as the Midterm exam! So what do you expect to happen? It's not what you think, and that is what was tested in this rather intriguing paper[1].

Abstract: We discuss a case study in which 14 advanced undergraduate physics students taking an honor-level quantum mechanics course were given the same four problems on midterm and final exams. The solutions to the midterm problems were provided to students. Their performance on the final exam shows that although some advanced students performed equally well or improved compared to their performance on the midterm exam on the problems given twice, a comparable number performed less well on the final than on the midterm exam. The wide distribution of students' performance on problems given again suggests that most advanced students do not automatically use their mistakes as an opportunity for learning, repairing, extending, and organizing their knowledge structure. Interviews with a subset of the students revealed attitudes toward problem solving and gave insight into their approach to learning.

The interviews conducted gave a bit of an insight on why a few of the students performed worst in the second exams, and after reading them, it certainly is plausible for that to happen.

I think that for instructors, this might be something to consider, that the ability of a student to do something or answer a question may not reflect on his or her ability to carry that knowledge at a different time. This is not surprising either. I am sure that if someone drops in front of me a QM problem that I used to be able to do when I was an undergraduate student, I won't be surprised if I have regressed and got stuck. There are many instances where our ability to solve or do something is based on how sharp our skill is on that particular area at that given moment. And I haven't looked at an undergraduate QM text in ages. So it is a bit understandable for a few of those students to simply "let go" of some of the stuff they were learning for the Midterm exam when they think it won't come up again.

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[1] A. Mason and C. Singh Am. J. Phys. v78, p.760 (2010).

Can You Draw Me A Physicist?

CERN asked children from the age of 9 to 11 to draw what they see as a physicist. And then, after they get to meet real-life physicists, they were asked to draw again.

It is interesting to see how physicists are perceived by the kids from these drawings. For one thing, there were a few pictures where we are in better outfits! :) The article mentioned a similar program done at Fermilab a while back.

I think the public also has a lot of misconception about scientists, and maybe the adults should be asked to go through the same drawing project!

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First Real Space Observation of a Skyrmion

Nature just published a paper claiming the first real-space observation of 2D skyrmion[1]. This was observed in a magnetic crystal system, i.e. this is out of condensed matter.

As in the earlier discovery of the "magnetic monopole", these exotic and fundamental physics are coming out of condensed matter physics, an area that many outside of that field do not consider to be "fundamental". Yet, it has produced a tremendous amount of physics that permeates into areas of physics that people usually consider as basic science and "fundamental".

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[1] X.Z. Yu et al., Nature v.465, p.901(2010).

Brookhaven's Summer Sunday Tours

It's time once again for the yearly Summer Sunday Tours at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY. If you're in the neighborhood, this is a tremendous opportunity for you to see major research facility at a prestigious national lab, not to mention, being able to engage with world class scientists.

Take note that while there are 5 Sunday tours, each one has a particular "theme", highlighted by a specific facility that will be open for that day.

A more detailed description of the tour can be found here.

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Rejection and Ridicule

Science Career section has a very nice article on what happens when you (i.e. a scientist) try to challenge a prevalent idea.

Not everyone who thinks they've made a game-changing discovery is right. Many -- perhaps most -- apparent breakthroughs are just wrong. Here, the input of peers brings to light inconsistencies in data or errors of interpretation. The process works best when scientists stand up -- with integrity, perseverance, and a certain degree of open-mindedness -- right up until it becomes clear that they're wrong.

But what if you're not wrong? Thick skin and persistence are keys to making the process play out well. Progress is made when good scientists keep working -- and keep supporting what they believe is true -- despite the criticism. Following are some coping strategies gleaned from our cohort of audacious scientists.

This is an important aspect in how science is done that a lot of the general public does not know. Certainly, when something new is presented that contradicts an current understanding, one EXPECTS a challenge, and one expects that the new idea or conclusion must have strong backing to survive. Even Einstein had to go through this rigorous process.

But when you read the article, keep a couple things in mind that are very clear:

1. These game-changing ideas were published in peer-reviewed journals. So crackpots who can't even get their "theory" into such a medium can't complain that the "system" will only publish papers that only follow the status quo. These are clear evidence to falsify such faulty claims.

2. That time and further refinement of evidence will eventually support you if you are correct. This is a crucial characteristic of a valid idea, whereby further studies will produce more evidence in favor of it, and will refine it even more. This is in contrast with "evidence" from pseudoscience where over time, the validity of its existence is under question.

Perhaps the best advice in the whole article can be summed up in this paragraph:

"At the end of the day, it's an empirical process," says David Botstein, the biologist at Princeton University who figured out how to map human genes, laying the foundation for the Human Genome Project. "If you disagree with conventional wisdom and the data are on your side, then you've got to persist. If on the other hand, you have a crackpot idea and the data are on the other side, you have to not be in love with your own idea."

This article adds another dimension to a similar and excellent article written by the late Dan Koshland in Science a while back.

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The Standard Model Explained - Briefly

The Telegraph has this "cheat sheet" for the public. It is a very, VERY, brief description (I wouldn't call it an explanation) of the Standard Model.

It isn't a bad description. It is just that, as with other news item for the public, it appeals to the short-attention-span crowd who only likes sound bites. There's A LOT missing here, which are the details. But who cares about the details, right?

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Inside the LHC

We all have read so many popular and media articles on the physics of the LHC. However, we don't see many articles on how it actually works, and what's under the covers. That's why this article is rather interesting. It describes the nuts and bolts of the operation at the LHC. In particular, it gives a rather concise description of the acceleration mechanism, beam dynamics, and diagnostics at the LHC. This, of course, is not a "sexy" piece of information and therefore, does not get a lot of media coverage and the public's attention. Still, it is a crucial piece to the LHC, without which, they can't hunt for the sexy science.

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Bubble Physics Video

A cool video about how bubbles actually pop. This is based on the recent Nature paper on this subject[1].

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[1] J.C. Bird et al. Nature v.465, p.759 (2010).