Peter Fisher was in the audience when Marin Soljacic, a fellow physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave a lunchtime talk about a technology that could transform consumer electronics.
An overgrown zebra mussel population at Fermilab received a rude awaking when operations engineers treated the lab’s water cooling system in early June to remove nearly 4000 pounds of mussels.
People visit Fermilab for many reasons. For those with an interest in physics or engineering, the draw, of course, is the chance to see Fermilab’s equipment up close and the opportunity to sample life at a great laboratory.
Chalkboard discussions usually arise spontaneously, with one person explaining something to a small group standing nearby. Scratchings on the board tend to represent fragments of a conversation rather than a complete train of thought.
It began with a guest speaker in her small upstate New York town. Roshan Houshmand’s uncles were visiting, and because of their engineering background, she thought a talk on physics would be ideal for a night of entertainment.
With a blue marker poised at a large white flip chart, Maury Tigner, a physicist at Cornell University, turned to a group of about 10 representatives from industry and asked, “What kind of applications interest your company?” The room was cramped and beige, a generic hotel meeting spa
Theorists cant help it: When asked to explain something, they reach for a piece of chalk. The language of math and physics seems to require a writing implement and a large vertical surface.
A dozen years after it first appeared on the world stage, the top quark is still one of the hottest topics in particle physics. Why is it so much heavier than any other particle? And what can it tell us about the origin of mass and other quantum mysteries?
Affectionately known at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as simply “The Blue Book,” The Stanford Two-Mile Accelerator has been a classic on site since the day it was published in 1968.
I've observed an important relationship between David Harris' intro "Appreciating Successes" and Ray Orbach's "Focus on the Future" in the March issue of symmetry.
The article (Apr 07) on improvisation in experimental physics was a fascinating one. Along the same lines, I heard that at Cornell (I think), and probably at least one other accelerator, Revereware—copper-bottomed steel cookware—was used to avoid having to make copper to steel welds.
