The lighter reading side of the American Institute of Physics is Physics Today. They have recently asked presidential candidates about 6 issues:
Science Education
Teaching Evolution
Nuclear Weapons
Science Investment
Energy Policy
Climate Change
You can see the responses here.
Categories: Education · Physics · Science · Technology
Tagged: 2008, candidate, Election, physics today
If you don’t think science matters in this election, read this from Science Magazine. Please, for the love of God, read it. Are you starting to see just how blisteringly crazy some of these folks are?
I wouldn’t have guessed that American presidential candidates in the 21st century may not accept the Theory of Evolution as much as that of Gravity. I would not have guessed that American presidential candidates in 2008 would still doubt whether or not humans have caused an increase in global temperature. I would not have guessed (yup, keep paying attention Paul fans) that any federal legislator would even dream of suggesting that any American would want to end federal funding for scientific research.
Wow.
That’s before we even get to talk about stem cells.
Don’t pretend this doesn’t matter. Science may not be political, but science policy is. Science funding is. That funding will decide whether we continue to buy our energy from despots or make it at home. It is critical for the economic survival of this nation that our president has a firm understanding of issues important to science policy.
Categories: Physics · Science · Technology · Uncategorized
Tagged: 2008, Election, Science Magazine, Science Policy
It isn’t too often that I see a materials science story that, well, captures my imagination. This is part of why I don’t do that sort of work. This story is very different. A Stanford group, headed by Yi Cui, has been able to place 20X more energy in to Li Ion batteries compared to standard Li Ion systems. Read about it here. They do it by adding spindles of silicon nanowires. The nanowires allow Lithium to attach, but they are far less brittle than other methods.
I don’t get excited about using my cell phone longer between charges, or how long this could let me use my laptop in the airport. I get excited about what happens here (thanks to whichever /. nerd showed that one off). The link is to a rather unreadable chart that shows energy density for batteries and other materials, such as gas and liquid hydrogen. Notice this, if you take the numbers for LiIons and bring them up an factor of 20, they are roughly the same as liquid H2.
That is a number that has huge implications. It is a number that can let you slap some new batteries in your Prius and take out the gas tank forever. Yes, there are problems putting lithium batteries in cars, but, let’s face it, there are problems putting gas in cars too.
Here is another number for you. Less than 1% of the energy in gas actually goes into accelerating the driver. That is after Detroit has scratching its nerdy collective head for about a century.
Found in /. Thanks.
Categories: Nanotechnology · Physics · Science
Tagged: Battery, liIon, lithium, silicon
One article from my institution just caught my eye. It comes from Jacques Chakhalian and it explores what happens to electronic orbits at the junction of two surfaces. We’ve known that strange things happen to electronics when you put two surfaces together, but Chakhalian shows how this could drive many different sorts of effects in magnetics and high temperature superconductors.
There is also an author’s summary of the article, so I won’t summarize too much myself. The basic idea is the following. It isn’t too bad to figure out what the electrons are doing deep into a material. If you make a crystal that quickly goes back and forth from one type of material to another, you never really get deep into anything and the electrons can do all sorts of interesting things that you can explore and control, such as superconductivity and magnetism.
You can find the article here:
Orbital Reconstruction and Covalent Bonding at an Oxide Interface
J. Chakhalian, et al.
Science 318, 1114 (2007)
Categories: Nanotechnology · Physics · Scienc Links · Science
I think this is probably rubbish, but interesting rubbish should always get a close look. The following article contends that k-12 students are improving in STEM fields and that we are actually producing more STEM university graduates than the job market can handle. This is VASTY against other conventional wisdom and several other studies.
Many of us teach using computers. More and more educators are discovering that the once Wild West of the Internet is actually a very useful place. This can cause a multitude of problems when a lab full of computers is only maintained by an instructor on a as needed basis.
Many instructors are reluctant to allow IT departments to take over because most teaching labs use course specific software that can’t be easily maintained by outsiders. When instructors also need internet access for old computers, you quickly get a perfect storm of mal-ware.
In the days second installment of posts about NYT science articles, you can find an interview with Eric Mazur here (link). Mazur is a leader in undergraduate physics education. I have had the opportunity to teach from his book and I find it to be fantastic. I often joke that all one has to do to become a leader in physics education is to know the word “inquiry”, but this greatly undersells Mazur’s contribution to the field and to science literacy.
If you wonder what conversations are like at most science conferences, now you can find out. This (link) would make one of the most interesting cocktail party talks around, but not outlandish. Most folks never get to see this sort of thing. Physicists really do have normal conversations about physics. Likewise, these conversations quickly get to other topics. We don’t talk in equations. We really do sit around for a little while as we figure out all of our mutual friends.
What you will see is science journalist George Johnson interviewing string theorist Sean Carroll. Johnson is the most science savvy journalist I’ve ever seen give an interview. Much of the conversation is about string theory, but it moves on into many topics from blogging to religion.
The Nature Publishing Group website tells us that quantum cryptography has been hacked. They also link to the Physical Review A paper that describes the work. Calling this a hack may be a small stretch for this experiment, but calling it cool physics is easy.
I know that fan posts and celebrity sightings are totally lame, particularly on blogs, but for Nobel Prize winners I make exceptions. The departments of Chemistry and Physics got together this year at my institution to bring Dudley Herschbach. Perhaps I shouldn’t say brought. The lecture was given by video conference to an auditorium (I’m told that Herschbach doesn’t travel anymore).
As a Chemical Physicist, this is about the best lecturer one could hope for. Herschbach’s Nobel Prize was given “for [his] contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes”. This work continues today and focuses on making extremely cold molecules. One possible goal of this type of work would be to make a BEC of molecules, rather than atoms. His talk yesterday focused not on BEC, but on the possibility of cooling molecules enough to allow one to study the wave nature of the thing. The idea is simple; cool the gas down enough to where the deBroglie wavelength is orders of magnitude larger than at room temperature. This can change collision properties, but one would like to know what else it could change. With atoms we understand what happens (well, sort of). For molecules this is much more challenging because there are many more things that molecules can do, particularly at low energy.
The point it this, if you get a change to see Dudley Herschbach, take it. As with many aging scientist, Herschbach is still dynamic and engaging, but is slowing down his speaking and traveling schedule. He has done, and continues to do some of the most exciting chemistry in the world.
