Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2013
Volume 58, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 18–22, 2013; Baltimore, Maryland
Session N3: Invited Session: Physics For Everyone |
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Sponsoring Units: DMP Chair: Laura H. Greene, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Room: Ballroom III |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 11:15AM - 11:51AM |
N3.00001: New ways to engage the public with quantum physics Invited Speaker: Julien Bobroff We are a few french condensed matter physicists involved in developping new routes to engage the public with our research field. We have worked with designers, graphists, artists, teachers and the public to produce original tools for outreach. In this talk, we will present some of them : \begin{itemize} \item demonstration tools such as a superconducting circus or a levitating Eiffel Tower \item futuristic videos (what life would be if room temperature superconductivity was achieved?) \item graphic animations to make quantum physic simple and appealing \item websites about quantum physics or superconductivity ( www.quantummadesimple.com or www.superconductivity.eu ) \item folding activities for kids to understand orbitals and superconductivity \end{itemize} We will also discuss the engagement of condensed matter physicists in outreach activities. Many of us find it hard to get involved : ``not enough time'', ``my field is to complex to be popularized'', ``not good for my career'', ``science museums do it better''... We will give some insight of how we could overcome this reluctance among our colleagues and get many french researchers involved in engaging the public over the past two years. All our activities and productions can be found in English at the website: www.vulgarisation.fr [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 11:51AM - 12:27PM |
N3.00002: The Physics of NASCAR: Why Going Fast is Harder than You Might Think Invited Speaker: Diandra Leslie-Pelecky NASCAR is unique among major sports in that science, math and engineering are integral to winning. You can't win races without getting the physics right. That constraint provides a novel way to reach the seventy-five million NASCAR fans who desperately want to understand why their driver is (or isn’t winning). Unlike outreach to those already interested in science, using popular culture to reach out requires taking advantage of unexpected events and non-traditional means. Does a loose piece of metal really justify a \$100,000 fine? (NPR didn't think so...) From the science of designing a 900-horsepower, 200 mph aerodynamic bullet to the knowledge and experience required to drive that car, physics is the ultimate arbiter of speed. Moving from simple introductory physics that approximates a race car as a point particle to computational fluid dynamics, you'll learn why driving fast isn’t as easy as you might think. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:27PM - 1:03PM |
N3.00003: How the ``Blues'' reveals the intimacy of music and physics Invited Speaker: J. Murray Gibson Little do most people know when they hear blues piano -- and you'll hear some live in this talk -- that physics permeates the style, as it does all of music. Why should you care? By deconstructing blues piano the intimacy of physics, mathematics and music will be revealed in its glory.\footnote{Gibson, J. M. ``The birth of the blues: how physics underlies music,'' Reports on Progress in Physics \textbf{72}, 076001, (2009).} The exercise says something about how the brains of the music composer and of the listener must be intimately linked to the physical principles of acoustics. ~And it provides a great vehicle to explain physical phenomena to non-scientists -- everything from quantum mechanics to protein structure. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:03PM - 1:39PM |
N3.00004: How Plastics Work Invited Speaker: Louis Bloomfield We encounter plastics every day, but despite their widespread use, amazing range of properties, and basic scientific underpinnings, most physicists---like most people---know relatively little about plastics. In contrast to hard crystalline and amorphous solids (e.g., metals, salts, ceramics, and glasses), we take plastics for granted, select them carelessly, and examine them more closely only on a need-to-know basis. By ignoring plastics until we need them, however, we risk not knowing what we don't know and using the wrong ones. To repurpose a familiar advertisement, ``there's a plastic for that.'' This talk will review some of the basic physics and science of plastics. It will examine the roles of temperature, order, intermolecular forces, entanglements, and linkages in plastics, and how those issues affect the properties of a given plastic. We'll stop along the way to recognize a few of the more familiar plastics, natural and synthetic, and explain some of their mechanical, chemical, and optical properties. The talk will conclude by explaining the remarkable properties of a plastic that has been largely misunderstood since its discovery 70 years ago: Silly Putty. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:39PM - 2:15PM |
N3.00005: Looking at Art in the IR and UV Invited Speaker: Charles Falco Starting with the very earliest cave paintings art has been created to be viewed by the unaided eye and, until very recently, it wasn't even possible to see it at wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. However, it is now possible to view paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, and other cultural artifacts at wavelengths from the x-ray, through the ultraviolet (UV), to well into the infrared (IR). Further, thanks to recent advances in technology, this is becoming possible with hand-held instruments that can be used in locations that were previously inaccessible to anything but laboratory-scale image capture equipment. But, what can be learned from such ``non-visible'' images? In this talk I will briefly describe the characteristics of high resolution UV and IR imaging systems I developed for this purpose by modifying high resolution digital cameras. The sensitivity of the IR camera makes it possible to obtain images of art ``in situ'' with standard museum lighting, resolving features finer than 0.35 mm on a 1.0x0.67 m painting. I also have used both it and the UV camera in remote locations with battery-powered illumination sources. I will illustrate their capabilities with images of various examples of Western, Asian, and Islamic art in museums on three continents, describing how these images have revealed important new information about the working practices of artists as famous as Jan van Eyck. I also will describe what will be possible for this type of work with new capabilities that could be developed within the next few years. [Preview Abstract] |
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