Session N32: International Physics Programs and History of Physics

Fulbright Opportunities in the Physical Sciences

The Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored by the United States Department of State and is principally funded by taxpayer contributions. Bi-national in nature, it includes academic year opportunities for both American and foreign scholars. More than 800 grants in 125 countries are available each year. The Program supports research, teaching and lecturing opportunities in all academic disciplines, numerous professional fields and the arts. American academics and administrators have multiple opportunities to internationalize their campuses and their discipline points of view. Further, Fulbright not only sends American scholars abroad but also brings scholars to the United States and should be considered a strategic internationalization opportunity both for individuals and for campuses. During the 2013-14 competition cycle there were 33 awards available in physics and astronomy and 175 all discipline awards. The presentation will guide attendees in identifying appropriate opportunities through the Fulbright Scholar Program and will make suggestions as to how to be successful in a proposal. Special attention will be given to opportunities available for specialists in physics. The workshop will also cover non-Core Fulbright Scholar opportunities for physicists and university administrators, including a number of short-term, innovative programs that send an additional 400 scholars from the United States to universities and research institutes abroad to offer expertise on issues of global interest from cutting-edge research to policy, to technical expertise in curriculum development, institutional planning, program assessment, and institutional capacity building.   

Revisiting the Bohr Atom 100 Years Later

We use a novel electron model wherein the electron is modeled as a point charge behaving as a trapped photon revolving in a Compton wavelength orbit at light speed. The revolving point charge gives rise to spiraling Compton wavelets around the electron, which give rise to de Broglie waves. When applied to the Bohr model, the orbital radius of the electron scales to the first Bohr orbit's radius via the fine structure constant. The orbiting electron's orbital velocity, Vb, scales to that of the electron's charge's internal velocity (the velocity of light, c) via the fine structure constant. The Compton wavelets, if they reflect off the nucleus, have a round trip time just long enough to allow the electron to move one of its diameters in distance in the first Bohr orbit. The ratio of the electron's rotational frequency, fe, to its rotational frequency in the Bohr orbit fb, is fe/fb $=$ 1/$\alpha^{2}$, which is also the number of electron rotations in single orbit. If we scale the electron's rotational energy (h*fe) to that of the orbit using this, the orbital energy value (h*fb) would be 27.2114 eV. However, the virial theorem reduces it to 13.6057, the ground state energy of the first Bohr orbit. Ref: www.tachyonmodel.com.   

A transformational year in physics: 1932

On New Year's Day, 1932, the {\em Physical Review} announced Urey's discovery of deuterium by the observation of Balmer emission lines in atomic hydrogen that were at the wavelengths predicted by Bohr's theory for an isotope with a mass twice that of the proton. At the time it was thought that the deuterium nucleus contained two protons and one ``nuclear electron'' confined inside the nucleus by an unknown force. This view quickly changed when {\em Nature} published Chadwick's discovery of the neutron nine weeks later. In June, Heisenberg made the suggestion that the neutron and proton were alternative levels of a quantum two-state system: the isospin concept that guides nuclear theory to this day. In August, Anderson discovered particles with the mass of, and charge opposite to, that of the electron: the first discovery of antimatter. Meantime, Cockroft and Walton effected the first disintegration of nuclei by particles accelerated by high voltages, and Lawrence and Livingston showed that the cyclotron could make high energy particles without high voltages. Six Nobel Prizes are directly traceable to work done within that one year! We review these events and their consequences. This talk is based on an article published in {\em Physics Today}, March 2013.   

Discovery and development of x-ray diffraction

In 1912 Max Laue at University of Munich reasoned x-rays to be short wavelength electromagnetic waves and figured interference would occur when scattered off crystals. Arnold Sommerfeld, W. Wien, Ewald and others, raised objections to Laue's idea, but soon Walter Friedrich succeeded in recording x-ray interference patterns off copper sulfate crystals. But the Laue-Ewald's 3-dimensional formula predicted excess spots. Fewer spots were observed. William Lawrence Bragg then 22 year old studying at Cambridge University heard the Munich results from father William Henry Brag, physics professor at Univ of Leeds. Lawrence figured the spots are 2-d interference of x-ray wavelets reflecting off successive atomic planes and derived a simple eponymous equation, the Bragg equation d*sin(theta)$=$ n*lamda. 1913 onward the Braggs dominated the crystallography. Max Laue was awarded the physics Nobel in 1914 and the Braggs shared the same in 1915. Starting with Rontgen's first ever prize in 1901, the importance of x-ray techniques is evident from the four out of a total 16 physics Nobels between 1901-1917. We will outline the historical back ground and importance of x-ray diffraction giving rise to techniques that even in 2013, remain work horses in laboratories all over the globe.   

Latest developments on documentary film ``The State of the Unit: The Kilogram''

This presentation shows the recent developments in the documentary film project ``The State of the Unit.'' The film, to be completed Fall 2013, looks at historical and current efforts to define precisely the unit of mass.