Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2015
Volume 60, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 2–6, 2015; San Antonio, Texas
Session L24: Invited Session: Pais Prize Session: Physics at the Intersection of History, Technology and Society |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP FPS Chair: Catherine Westfall, Michigan State University Room: 203AB |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
L24.00001: Abraham Pais Prize Lecture: Understanding the Impacts of Global Warming: a History Invited Speaker: Spencer Weart The idea that fossil fuel emissions might cause global warming was first proposed around the end of the 19th century, and for the following half century it sounded like a good thing. In the 1950s, confirmation that warming really might be coming led to more varied speculations. Scientists could only state possible problems in vague terms. First on the list were sea-level rise and a threat to food supplies. New items were added through the 1960s and 1970s, ranging from the degradation of natural ecosystems to threats to human health. Experts in fields from forestry to economics, even national security, pitched in to assess a variety of possible consequences. It turned out to be impossible to make solid predictions, given the differences from one region to another and the ways human society itself might try to adapt to the changes. In the 1990s, lengthy technical studies abandoned specific predictions of impacts to address ``vulnerabilities'' under different likely ``scenarios.'' Researchers also began to explore the risks and consequences of extreme weather events like droughts and floods. By around 2000 the major likely impacts were well understood. Now the task was to pin down the specific risks in each of the many different regions, ecosystems, and human systems. Meanwhile actual impacts began to appear, such as changes in species ranges and unprecedented deadly heat waves. Nearly all experts now understood that civilization faced a monumental challenge. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
L24.00002: Burnt by the Sun: Jack Kilby and the `70s Solar Boom Invited Speaker: Cyrus Mody Much has been written, by both scientists and historians, about the contributions of Jack Kilby (co-winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics) to the invention of the integrated circuit and semiconductor microelectronics more generally. The story goes that Kilby conceived of the integrated circuit in 1958 during his first weeks working for Texas Instruments. Considerably less well known, however, is that Kilby took a leave of absence from TI in 1970 to become a consultant and independent inventor. The projects Kilby chose to pursue -- from teaching machines to electronic checkwriters to offering advice to the military -- offer insights into how establishment scientists and engineers thought about science's role in solving America's social and economic problems in the dreary 1970s. I focus in particular on Project Illinois, a residential solar energy system that Kilby and two colleagues proposed in the wake of the OPEC embargo, and which Texas Instruments developed almost to the point of large-scale manufacturing. The cancelation of Project Illinois in 1983 -- which precipitated Kilby's final resignation from TI and retreat from active research -- tells us a great deal about the frustrations of doing ``socially relevant'' science and engineering in the 1970s, and possibly also today. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
L24.00003: Optimistic Dangers: Views of Radium Therapy During the American Radium Craze Invited Speaker: Aimee Slaughter 1903 marked the beginning of intense and widespread popular interest in and curiosity about the newly-discovered element radium. This American radium craze was marked by an outpouring of media attention. Radium captured the public?fs attention because of its strange properties, which could not be fully explained by scientists: it remained warmer than its surroundings, it glowed in the dark, and it emitted energy from an unknown internal source. The radioactivity emitted by radium also had marked effects on the body. In this talk I will focus on views of these physiological effects of radium during the height of the American radium craze, 1903--1907. Physicians experimented with radium as a therapy, and newspapers reported on radium treatments of ailments ranging from acne to wife beating. When applied to superficial cancers, radium seemed to melt the tumor away, to be replaced by healthy tissue. Newspapers were quick to report that radium had cured cancer. At the same time, radium was also understood to be a dangerous substance: newspapers discussed the possibility of weaponizing its internal stores of energy, patients were often burned in the course of treatment, and it was speculated that radium in large amounts might blind, maim, or kill someone exposed to it. These dangers were well known but were never mentioned in the uniformly optimistic reports on the potentials of radium therapy. The modern expectation that beneficial applications of science may have a hidden darker side was not part of American culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. The early radium clinic was a unique site where non-scientists physically experienced a new scientific discovery, an element that was both familiar and unknown. At the height of the radium craze, the dangers of radium were optimistically set aside as physicians and physicists were trusted to tame the new element. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
L24.00004: To Rule the Waves: Cable Telegraphy and the Making of ``Maxwell's Equations'' Invited Speaker: Bruce Hunt How and why did Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field come to be cast into the now familiar form of four vector equations? In particular, how and why was this done not by James Clerk Maxwell himself, but by Oliver Heaviside in a series of articles published in a London electrical trade journal in 1885, several years after Maxwell's death? The answer, I will argue, lies in the demands and opportunities presented by the global network of submarine telegraph cables, one of the characteristic technologies of the Victorian British Empire. Heaviside, himself a former telegrapher, was steeped in the problems confronting cable telegraphy, particularly the distortion or ``retardation'' that signals suffered in passing along a cable. It was Heaviside's search for an effective tool with which to tackle such problems that led him to take up Maxwell's theory and then to recast it into the four ``Maxwell's equations.'' [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 10:24AM - 11:00AM |
L24.00005: The Social Appropriation of Quantum Language and Imagery Invited Speaker: Robert Crease Planck introduced 'quantum' as a technical term in 1900 in connection with studies of the emission and absorption of light. Following the development of quantum mechanics in 1925-1927, quantum terminology and imagery -- including 'quantum leap,' 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,' and 'complementarity' -- began appearing in ever-widening cultural spheres, including journalism, literature, philosophy, television, and coffee cups and t-shirts. Later, these terms and images were joined by others, including 'Schroedinger's Cat' and 'parallel worlds.' As a result, numerous quantum terms and images have become popular and powerful metaphors in the public imagination. Each of these terms and images followed a different trajectory in moving from their original scientific context into popular culture. This talk explores the trajectories and popular meanings of these terms, as well as their uses and misuses. [Preview Abstract] |
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