Physics and Physicists

The AIP has produced one of the most informative historical account of the history of quantum entanglement after EPR, especially on its development before Bell came up with his infamous inequality test. It is a two-parter, so you definitely want to read both. What I was not aware of was the early experiment by Chien-Shiung Wu in this area. She is definitely one of the giants of physics that shoul…

I gave this prompt to ChatGPT: Sketch an object moving in a circular path, showing the tangential velocity at 4 different points along its path. This was the image that it gave me: I then gave what I thought a simpler prompt: sketch an object moving in a circular path having a centripetal force ... and this was what I got: I guess it is worth a giggle. Zz.

I got the new Dwarf Mini smart telescope for my birthday this year. I never had a desire for a telescope before even though images of these remote places in our universe had always fascinated me. It also helps that I teach basic Astronomy for students wanting a GED science credits. However, when I came across videos of the Dwarf Mini and saw how compact and stylish it was, I made a mistake of exp…

A rather interesting post on AI's ability to actually do real physics research that beginning graduate students are expected to do. More than 50 physicists from over 30 institutions built the "CritPt" benchmark ..... The benchmark asks models to solve original, unpublished research problems that resemble the work of a capable graduate student starting an independent project. Google's "Gemini 3 Pr…

It's unusual that a Nobel Prize in Physics is given to physicists working in the field that was the same as my PhD research work. It finally happened this year. I did research work in tunneling spectroscopy in cuprate superconductors, and we did both superconductor-insulator-normal metal and superconductor-insulator-superconductor tunnel junctions, the latter of which is where we observe the Jose…

CERN Courier has a special issue this month celebrating what they consider as the 100th anniversary of Quantum Mechanics. Of course, the focus here is predominantly on elementary/particle physics. And yet, many of the most obvious demonstration and manifestation of quantum mechanics can be found not in particle physics, but in condensed matter physics. The Schrodinger-Cat type demonstration using…

First of all, I'm old! I started being in a student in physics since the early 1980's (do your own math). During all of that time when I have paid attention to physics, I've seen a lot of major milestones, including the discovery of High-Tc superconductors, discovery of exoplanets, the cold-fusion debacle, etc...etc. The one thing that pops up every now and then is the claim of the possible disco…

Nature has published a wonderful review of the discovery and progress that we have made in understanding BE condensation since its discovery. It is an open access article and you can download the full article. I definitely like the figure that shows the major milestone in its development, but it would be nice if that is expanded even more to include references, or at least citation numbers so tha…

In one of my exam questions, I gave the students the average radius of Earth's orbit around the Sun at 150 million km. I told them that we can assume that the orbit is circular. I even gave them the formula for the circumference of a circle. The question then asked them to find the speed of the Earth as it moves around the Sun. After the exam and after the results were published, a number of stud…

I mentioned earlier of an article on the Davisson-Germer's experiment as part of the commemoration of 100 anniversary of Quantum Mechanics (QM). This is an article describing a bit more of the celebration and the importance of QM. Hint: without QM, none of your modern electronics (computers, smartphones, etc.) will work. Zz.

As we continue to celebrate 100 years of Quantum Physics, this is a fun account of the famous Davisson-Germer experiment that was the first to demonstrate the wave-like nature of electrons. It's interesting that, at the end of the article, it was pointed out that this experiment did not originally was set out to seek the experimental evidence for the wave-like nature of electrons. They were inten…

Rhett Allain posted this article on Wired on the 5 physics equation that "everyone" should know. They are, in the order that was presented: - Newton's 2nd Law of motion - The wave equation - Maxwell's equations (he cheated a bit because this is a set of 4 equations) - Schrodinger's equation (natch!) - Einsten's energy-mass equivalence equation You can read the article to see what he has to say ab…

This is similar to my earlier query regarding the sequence of topics that are introduced. My earlier post was the order of introducing the concept of energy and the concept of momentum. In this post, it is the issue of the sequence of introducing the double slit interference ahead of the single-slit diffraction. This sequence is done in Knight's text "Physics for Scientists and Engineers". I don'…

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) will be livestreaming the total Solar Eclipse of 2024. Here is the blurb from them: Don't just watch the eclipse — explore it. On April 8, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the NSF National Solar Observatory are hosting an educational livestream all about the science of the sun. The livestream is a free resource that educators can use in their class…

In my algebra-based General Physics courses, I get many Biology/Pre-med/Life Science majors, so of course many of the examples that I choose tend to be related to those areas. When we cover traveling waves and Doppler effect, I dive into medical diagnostics to show a few of the applications of Doppler effect in that area. Interestingly enough, in Doppler Ultrasound, the color scheme that they use…

This is a rather fun article in this week's Nature. It reveals some of the fascinating origin of words used in Physics and how they may not match the more common usage of the word. All of us in physics (and in science) know of this, where we may use the same words that are used in everyday language, but they have very different meanings in physics. Unfortunately, for many people outside of physic…

Please read the article carefully before you freak out. Hint: look at the date. Zz.

Previous posts: This is another one of my favorite web application because it has a ability to assign random values to various parameters in the problem. This is a simulation of a motional emf in the form of a rail gun. It actually is a straight-forward application of magnetic force acting on a straight current. One may also solve this using Faraday's law, but it is not as straight-forward to sol…

A while back, I wrote an article on how to impress upon the students of the need have units in most of the numbers that they write in physics. I gave them a recipe for a banana bread, but I left out all the units of measure. It was the students themselves who noticed what was wrong with the recipe, so in the process, I managed to convey to them that (i) without units, these numbers are meaningles…

This is a nice news article that provides a basic summary of the applications of physics in healthcare and medicine. It's another one of those where if someone thinks physics only deals with esoteric and useless ideas, show him/her this. I've mentioned many examples of similar medical/health/etc. applications and concepts that came directly from physics, such as this one. As someone who often tea…