Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2018
Volume 63, Number 4
Saturday–Tuesday, April 14–17, 2018; Columbus, Ohio
Session G10: Historical Trends Across the Disciplines |
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: Dan Kennefick, University of Arkansas Room: A216 |
Sunday, April 15, 2018 8:30AM - 9:06AM |
G10.00001: Doublet Dudes: Shaping the Future of Fusion Invited Speaker: Ryan Chaban The pursuit of controlled thermonuclear fusion to generate energy is currently one of the largest scientific collaborations in the world. Yet, compared to other big science endeavors of the 20th and 21st centuries, the history of nuclear fusion research is distinct because it persisted as small competitive programs across national laboratories well into its middle age before becoming the modern international effort to construct the most expensive science project in the history of the world. Unlike other scientific collaborations with more fixed goals, such as the Manhattan Project, the engineering problems of fusion research present the opportunity for many different simultaneous and creative approaches. During the 1950s and 60s, each national lab participating in fusion research had its own machine or approach that capitalized on different physics, however, in 1968 the Russian tokamak achieved order of magnitude higher temperatures forcing the US to kill many of its smaller programs and machines to catch up on building tokamaks. During this fever, The Doublet Dudes (Dr. Tihiro Ohkawa and Torkil Jensen) at General Atomics, guided by their experiences on Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability with the DC Octopole, defiantly put a twist on the tokamak with the “plasma-current multipole” or Doublet. The flexibility and capabilities of the doublet grew through three iterations from a small tabletop machine to the basis for DIII-D, currently the only mid-size tokamak in America. Along the way, the innovations of the Doublet Dudes would go on to challenge and progress the fusion subfields of plasma control and shaping. To this day, the challenges posed in the doublet design are used by some researchers to challenge and understand the limits of modern algorithms for control and field reconstruction, and while the dedicated doublet may have died in 1983, its impact has given shape to the modern field of fusion. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 15, 2018 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
G10.00002: Historical Failures in International Cooperation in Physics and Astronomy Virginia Trimble Through the "long 19th century" many international meetings happened and new organizations took shape in physics, chemistry, and astronomy, including the AGK, standardization of units and constants, Hale's Solar Union, and a plan to rationalize organic chemical nomenclature. Most of this fell apart in 1919, when only "those nations at war with the central powers" were allowed to join IUPAP, IAU, and IUPAC. But there were curious and ominous precursors in the form of expeditions to observe solar eclipses and the 18th and 19th century transits of Venus. Not only were none of these international, with every interested and prosperous country sending its own people and equipment to distant places, many weren't even national; each of two or more British, American, German, and French observatories sent its own crew and hardware. International distrust is not new! But I am happy to report that the astronomical equipment removed from Peking by Germany in 1900 was eventually returned, as required by a specific clause (the only one mentioning astronomy) in the Treaty of Versailles. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 15, 2018 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
G10.00003: Observables and Hamilton-Jacobi approaches to general relativity Donald Salisbury There were in the 1950’s through the 1970’s two dominant schools of thought regarding the nature of observables in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, motivated by distinct foundational principles. The Wheeler school and associates including Arnowit, Deser, Misner, B. DeWitt, and Kuchar placed their emphasis on the quantum superposition of observables, recognizing that the measurable amplitudes needed to be insensitive to the choice of spacetime coordinates. Bergmann and Komar, on the other hand, regarded the identification of diffeomorphism invariants in a classical Hamiltonian system as an essential initial step in the formulation of a quantum theory of gravity. Both approaches, however, appealed to a gravitational Hamilton-Jacobi theory. In this talk I will investigate the manner in which the conflicting principles underlying the two approaches determined the questions that were addressed and the interpretation of proposed solutions. Their culminating theoretical outcomes in the 1970’s are surprisingly similar. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 15, 2018 9:30AM - 9:42AM |
G10.00004: Abstract Withdrawn
|
Sunday, April 15, 2018 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
G10.00005: Carl Anderson´s 1932 Positron Per Carlson On August 2, 1932 Carl Anderson found the track of a positive particle with a mass about the same as that for the electron when examining photos from the magnetic field cloud chamber he operated at Caltech. The positron was discovered and Anderson shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in physics for that. However, the 60 MeV positron track strangely enough went upwards through the chamber, a fact that so far has not been much discussed. In Anderson´s published papers (Science 76(1932)238, Phys. Rev. 43(1933)491, Nobel lecture 1936) or in modern textbooks this remarkable fact is not discussed in detail. In this presentation different possibilities to produce an upward going positron in Anderson´s chamber will be reviewed. [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700