One of my favourite scenes from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books earlier this year (I forgot to post these nearer the time). They’d set up giant crosswords at various points on the UCLA campus (where the Festival was held), and people gathered around and tried to solve them. I think this is a lovely idea!
Continue reading ‘Festive’
So I went out to get a new kettle a few days ago. I’ve now given up on a rather lovely design by the company Chantal that I’ve been using for many years since on two models in succession (or is it three?) the same flaw has revealed itself - the plastic parts of the Hohner whistling lid began to loosen gradually (probably from too much heat up the sides, which may be my fault) and then you eventually end up with a non-fitting non-whistling lid.
I began to assess other kettle designs, and in doing so found myself thinking idly about a number of physics issues. One of the main ones was energy. If I got a smaller kettle (the one I had before had a capacity of 1.8 quarts, and I was considering ones as big as 2 quarts and ones as small as 1.5 quarts), which I was leaning heavily toward, it would probably encourage me to save energy and not boil so much water. On the other hand, maybe that’s really silly, since I might just be putting the same amount of water into the kettle anyway… I’d never fill either up all the way in any case. But if I put the same amount of water into both kettles, would the smaller one end up using less energy anyway as I don’t have to heat up the extra air in the chamber, or does that not matter…? It’s not that simple since the chamber is not sealed. Hot air (and later, steam) is escaping all the time. Well, this is all complicated by the fact that the smaller kettle has less of its base in contact with flame, so I’d have to turn down the flame, and heat it for longer on a lower flame than with the larger kettle… would that make a difference? Perhaps a smaller chamber at lower flame means slower steam escape velocity, and so a quieter whistle. Not good if you’re prone to forgetting that you’ve put the kettle on during an absorbing computation…downright dangerous, in fact!
This was not an entirely serious discussion, you see, but it’s sort of fun sometimes to find these things floating around in one’s head. Physicists (and I imagine, other scientists) have this sort of thing flit through their heads a lot. The key thing -especially as a Theoretical Physicist- is knowing when to engage with one of these problems, and when to ignore them. Is there are clear route to tackling the problem? Is it worth it? Is there something to be learned from solving this problem that might be useful elsewhere? In fact, I was trying to explain this all to a writer friend of mine Continue reading ‘Consider a Spherical…’
I’ve just noticed that Jacques Distler will be blogging from Strings 2007 (his first post is here). Excellent! I hope that others will be too. If you learn of anyone else who will be blogging from the conference (either physics content or other aspects of the event), do let me know (either in comments or by email) and I’ll update this post with pointers. If you have anything interesting to share from it*, but don’t blog, consider sending it along too!
-cvj
(*You know, anything from supplementary physics discussion to incriminating photos from those notorious string theory after-parties that plague the conference circuit…)
The main annual conference in my main field of interest starts today. Strings 2007 is in Madrid, and runs all week. The website is here (while there, have a play with the front page image of the Goya painting - quite entertaining - snapshot right). They promise to update the schedule/speakers page with scans of slides, and video, so you’ll be able to keep track of some of the new developments online. There’s no system for doing this live, or asking questions remotely, so if you want to quiz Ed Witten about his new 83-page monster paper on three dimensional gravity that came out yesterday (just in time for the conference!), or feel the buzz of event-anticipation whenever Witten talks about a huge new sets of results, you’ll still have to show up in person.
Why am I not there? Well, it would be nice, but there are lots of reasons I’m not going Continue reading ‘Strings 2007′
…and then you have days when nothing works. At all. This was not like last Saturday. Despite starting out nice and early with a cup of tea in the sunshine and scribbling away while wrinkling one’s brow. Things got worse and worse through the morning, as I realized that many things I so wanted to be right about the next stage of my computation (which perhaps I’ll tell you about one day) were in fact not going to work. Not even close.
By lunchtime I’d given up, and summarized my thoughts on the research blog for my collaborators. Was probably not the most encouraging reading for them to encounter, but I tried to be as constructive in my deconstruction of our idea as I could. I’m hoping that they -or later, I- might find some useful threads to pick up on from my notes and remarks.
It’s not over yet.
Maybe I should have gone for that hike instead of sitting entirely at home on a Continue reading ‘Morning Computations’
And the immediate followup question is “Should there be?” I’m referring to the story on NPR’s Marketplace the other day about the effects that some women’s voices have on whether they are taken seriously in the workplace. The audio is here, along with a transcript. The article, entitled “Professional women? With little-girl voices?”, is by Ashley Milne-Tyte.
The piece begins with a clip from the recent news, of Monica Goodling (Former Justice Department White House liaison) speaking in her defense during the hearings over the Justice Department firings. She has a noticeably “little-girl”-pitched voice. (I’m sure you remember hearing her during the news or the live broadcasts, and possibly your first instinct was to ask yourself why - in the political feeding frenzy aimed at bringing down Alberto Gonzales from the Attorney General position - the Congressional Democrats were now rounding up and grilling small children. (Or at least that was how it was for me for a split second since I mostly don’t watch television news - I find it too slow and otherwise annoying - and so I heard her on the radio.) It was then announced in the news piece who it was and I thought nothing more of it at the time…)
My own take on this is that it does not matter. You just learn, and move on. Since coming to the USA long ago, I adjusted my expectations about what are considered Continue reading ‘Is there a Perfect Pitch?’
Ah, the two-body problem. On NPR’s Marketplace last week, Kai Ryssdal had a piece entitled “Studying ways to help 2-career couples”, covering a “Dual Careers Conference” at Cornell. The audio is here, along with a transcript.
It’s an important issue, (which I’m not going to spend a huge amount of time on here, since I’ve been blogging too much this morning so far), and I’d no idea that there were conferences devoted to it.
From the point of view of academia, there’s one aspect of it which still has not penetrated very far in the minds of many, in my mind. It is one I tried to emphasize when this issue came up during various advisory committees I’ve served on with relevance to matters of hiring, diversity, etc. What’s on my mind is that the two-body problem (as it is jokingly referred to by some) is not always to be thought of as a “problem” from the point of view of potential employers. In fact, if you can work with a potential employee to find employment for their spouse at your or a neighbouring institution, it actually can strengthen your faculty roster in many ways. Aside from the obvious ones, there are the benefits of having happier employees who are committed to setting down roots, rather than an employee who is spending a lot of time travelling to or calling their spouse in another city, wondering every day whether their job is really worth that strain. Retention is a huge issue in managing your faculty. The value of settled employees cannot be overstated if you take the long view for your organization.
Anyway, have a listen to the article (or read the transcript). There’s the usual interview with members of couples who are academics and struggling with the issue, and it’s interesting if you’re not familiar with the matter, or perhaps if you’re in academia, early in your career and wondering about what the job market holds for you. And if you’re currently wondering whether to date other academics or not, don’t be put off (at least not by this issue!). Things are getting better. Employers are getting smarter Continue reading ‘The Two-Body Problem’
Yes, part of my job is to sit and think about how the universe works. People hear this, and they wonder exactly what that entails. Well, it entails a lot of things - sometimes there’s the grand thoughts and the thought experiments and the like that you hear of from documentaries and books about Einstein and other famous scientists - but more often that not it is grungy nuts and bolts.
Take yesterday for example. After a week of working on various calculations and chipping away at improving my understanding of how to approach a certain problem, I decided to take Saturday and be outdoors a bit more…see what it was like outside. You know…. Have an actual Saturday Saturday. (I did not end up being booked to do that TV shoot, by the way, so I had a nice clear day ahead of me.)
What actually transpired was this:
Trying to calculate all day long. Lunch break. During this moment of procrastination, I thought I’d tell you about the product of yesterday’s procrastination. At some point in the morning I decided that I was not thinking straight about aspects of my computation (like what it all means), and that this could be helped by having a bigger space to work on that I have at home right now.
I don’t know about others, but sometimes in addition to the need to change venues during research thoughts, I also need to change the medium I’m writing on. So at lunch I went shopping and after visiting far too many stores (art supply for one part, office supply for another) to get the right things, look what I got (see left picture)!
This year’s month-long Theoretical Advanced Study Institute -TASI- looks especially good, from my point of view, with a great combination of topics and lecturers. As usual, it is held in Boulder, Colorado. It’s all about current ideas and experiments and observations in particle physics and cosmology. Three USC students are there and I’ve heard from them that things have been great so far.
Well, the great news is that the TASI people are making the lectures available online a fairly short time after their delivery. The link is here. So even though not there, you can schedule some time to take these lecture courses if you like. I glanced for a while at Raphael Bousso’s first lecture in the series “Cosmology and the Landscape”, and it was clear and very well presented. (This is not entirely surprising - Raph is always an excellent lecturer.)
Remember the Tune “Money for Nothing”, by Dire Straits? It was a big hit in the 80s. (Remember those?) Well, Warren of the new blog A Strange Universe* wrote a rather brilliant physics version of it, to be sung to the same tune. The “stringer” is the object of the ridicule of the song’s character. The original post is here, where he’ll tell you his thoughts on the song. I can’t resist (I hope he forgives me) posting the entire thing here, rather than an extract, which would break up its impact. (Original song’s lyrics are here, by the way, for comparison.)
So here it is:
Continue reading ‘That Ain’t Workin’’
[Continuing an earlier post...which you'll need to read to understand this one. Link here.]
So, unhappy with the state of affairs, I was on the warpath. I began to consider how to deploy my shiny weapons of war. I considered what to do. I could not believe that this really is the policy of the people overseeing the whole operation of Trojan Hospitality (the organization that oversees the whole of campus catering) - it must have been a unilateral effort on the part of the manager and staff in that particular cafe. Or I least I hoped so. So before calling on even higher powers from, say, the Provost’s office, I thought I’d talk to the head person at Trojan Hospitality. If I got no joy there, then I’d go higher. (Ironically, not long ago I’d politely turned down an approach for me to consider a position in the Provost’s office to become a sort of official campus-wide trouble-shooter on an ad-hoc basis for problems of precisely this sort.)
Another reason why this is all so frustrating to me is the fact that USC recently scored abominably in a recent report/survey grading college campuses according to how much effort they make in the area of sustainability. (Sustainable Endownments Insitute here, USC’s report card explaining its “D” score here.) While the report’s results seemed to me to be likely a bit harsh, I’ve always wondered whether anyone at USC actually cared about this issue enough to take the report seriously. (I’ve my own issues with Trojan Transportation with regards environmental matters -not the least because pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transportation seem to be lower on the food chain than people who buy parking permits- but have not got around to making noises about it to date beyond using the suggestion box in their office, and some comments in the campus surveys they sometimes circulate.)
So, here was the letter I wrote on Friday:
Continue reading ‘The Meddler, II’
I don’t like getting angry. I don’t like losing my temper. In the first place, it makes me feel like I failed, and in the second place, I’m a little too good at being angry. I’m really scary. So I let it happen very little.
On Wednesday of last week, I almost completely lost my temper at work (bad enough), and in front of a guest (even worse, in my opinion), Bee, and in front of two of my students (setting a bad example). I apologized to them all, several times, later. Luckily (maybe because I was not wearing any purple pants?), I did not lose it entirely but my internal temperature was really very high indeed by the end of the incident.
What was the matter? You’re possibly going to think that this is an insignificant matter, but I don’t agree. We all went for coffee to one the (usually excellent, with usually very good staff) cafes on campus, and as usual I brought along my own coffee cup. I do that a lot, primarily since it means that I do not use any paper cups as a result, and secondarily because it keeps the coffee warmer for longer, is close to spill-proof, and is much nicer to drink from. I’ve been doing this for years. The routine is usually this: I ask for a small coffee, they hand me a small coffee cup, I smile and say I already have a cup and hand it back, I pay for the coffee, and I pour myself a small coffee and leave. It’s not always in that order, but it is close enough.
This time, I asked for a small coffee, and indicated that I’d have it in my cup, as usual. Continue reading ‘The Meddler, I’
It turns out* that the local NBC affiliate did a piece on the California State Science Fair (which I reported on yesterday). There’s a brief overview, shots of some of the students talking at their displays during the judging, and interviews with some of the students. It’s rather good. Link to it here (unfortunately you have to let it play a brief ad first).
-cvj
(*Thanks, Chris Gould!)
Yesterday was a full day indeed. The main event? The California State Science Fair. The venue? The California Science Center (just across the road from USC). Here’s a picture of it in case you’ve never been:
(Click for larger view.) California Science Center (with one of my personal emergency escape crafts cleverly disguised somewhere in the picture - all scientists have emergency escape craft, by the way - along with our plans to take over the world, our lab coat, and so forth…)
The time? 7:00am. Yes, we start early, as there is a lot to do for the long morning. The judges all gather in the IMAX theatre for a briefing about the ins and outs of the organization this year, the times at which various things will happen, and a reminder about some of the finer points of judging.
At 8:00am we broke up into groups of judges who will judge various sections. Mine was Applied Mechanics and Structures - Senior. Here, we decided on our collective strategy concerning how we’ll go around the various displays, making sure at least five judges (there were ten of us in total) see each project once in the first round of interviews. We’ll compare notes during the break at 11:00am, agree which ones we should all have seen - in order to focus on deciding which ones get which prizes or honourable mentions. I forgot to take a picture of our group of judges sitting around the table chatting. Most of the judges in my group were people from the aerospace industry, I gathered. About three or four people were new to the whole thing, and so some of us explained a bit about the things that we ought to be looking out for in the judging. This also (given the section were were to judge, and given the makeup of the judging panel - many coming from an industry where the place where the science and engineering are quite thoroughly - and necessarily - mixed together) leads to discussion about making sure to distinguish between a great science project and a great engineering project. It’s also good to be aware, when making comparisons, of the vast differences in resources that some entrants have access to. These two things, to my mind, are very important (and we all agreed). A kid (especially one with access to lots of resources, for example) can dazzle an unwary judge with lots of fancy cool equipment and build something that is truly wonderful and admirable, but that does not necessarily mean that they would have done as much science as the next entrant who has done some very careful scientific experimentation with a innovative way of answering a clearly stated question, but in a less spectacular setting - perhaps mostly using more affordable household items.
(Click for larger view.) Overview shot of one of the sections, with poster displays.
Well, with that in mind, we all went off to meet the youngsters! See the project listings here. This is the best part, of course… talking with all those enthusiastic young people Continue reading ‘A Fair Bit of Fun with Science’
One of my colleagues here at USC, Itzhak Bars (picture right, by Don Milici), spends a lot of effort trying to understand aspects of time. In fact, in his way of approaching things, the fact that we see a single time dimension (all the others being space dimensions) would be a consequence of certain choices (”gauge choices”, in the more technical language) made, whereas in the underlying formulation, there’s be two times. Yes, two.
You hear about extra dimensions, and you think “string theory”, no doubt. No, this is nothing to do with string theory. He’s developed this idea independently of string theory for Continue reading ‘Taking the Time to Work it out’
The History Channel is diversifying a bit, and doing their first science show. It will be called “The Universe” and will premiere on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 9pm ET. It will be a series of 13 episodes. Here’s a blurb I found on the web:
It’s been fifty years since man first ventured into outer space. Now we have robots on Mars, telescopes capturing the birth of the stars and their collapse into black holes, and probes slamming into comets at hyperspeed. What we’ve learned has completely changed our understanding of the universe and our relationship with it – we once thought ourselves to be at the center, now we know we are a small, small spec. This epic series throws light on all the known universe and out to the edge of the unknown – what’s going on out there, what is our place, and is there life outside of Earth?
I like the idea of more TV channels (besides the usual suspects like PBS or Discovery) getting involved in making shows that have more science, so given the end that it serves (see the about page) -and because it is interesting and fun work- I was happy to help out when I got a call to do some interviews to camera for use in the show. (The other show I did some segments for last year -see here and here- turns out to be part of a (reportedly somewhat saucy) variety and comedy show, I’ve since heard! It will air on another channel in the Fall, and I’ll tell you more about it then. )
We recorded on Thursday. The original plan was to record in a house in the Hollywood Hills, with access to some Griffith Park backdrop to shoot some b-roll of me doing a bit of hiking, but the fire put a stop to that. Instead, we found another location - a house with a lovely garden overlooking the Topanga wilderness. (Actually, they wondered whether we could use my house and garden, but I decided that the garden was not ready for prime time yet, having just begun to come out of its Winter slump where there was hardly any rainfall… So it remains still just between me and you my dear blog readers, ok? In the end, it would not have worked anyway since on Thursday there was still a lot of activity from helicopters en route to patrolling the Griffith park embers… not good for filming!)
How did it go? Ok, it started well. There were two separate settings, for two separate Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XI - The Universe’
Cliché, I know, but I presume that is what calling it “Commencement Day” is all about. Is that not right?
(Commencement Day at USC: Part of the crowd of graduates, family, and friends assembled in front of the grand stage set up in front of the Doheny library.)
Yesterday was both a happy and slightly sad day for me, because I’m a bit of a softy when it comes down to it. Quite a number of the students I taught over the last few years graduated yesterday. While I was so pleased to see them all happy and looking forward to moving on, and meet their parents and siblings, 
I was also a bit sad, since I won’t be seeing them around the USC campus any more. I feel like I’m losing a number of good friends, which seems like an odd thing to say given that I don’t really know them all as friends in the usual sense…. But I got accustomed to seeing them around, spending time with them talking, laughing, worrying, puzzling… getting coffee, milkshakes… They became a real part of my life for a while… Now they are off to take on the world. I feel a bit like a parent… perhaps I’m getting broody?
The campus was lovely yesterday, even more than it usually is. The ground staff Continue reading ‘First Day of the Rest of Their Lives’
Well, an hour ago my Electromagnetism class finished the final exam I set them. Hurrah! There was no immediate sign that it was a total disaster, so that’s good news. Except for the matter of producing final grades and such things, this marks the end of the (standard) undergraduate teaching period for me for the academic year. Nothing until late August.
So you are wondering: - What will he do now? Head for the beach? (Well, it is over 90 degrees F outside, after all. The Jacaranda blooms’ arrival (click left for larger) always signal for me the beginning of those intensely relaxed Los Angeles Summer stretches… Hmmmm….)
Well, it’s Friday, and the end of the week of standard work days, although not of course the end of the working week. I’m sure I do not speak only for myself when I say that this job does not really get switched off at a specific time every day (as you’ve seen), and it certainly is not contained to any specific days of the week. But I do scale things back quite a bit on Saturdays and Sundays and try to focus more on other things in my life (there are exceptional circumstances, of course). So this will be the last in this short series of “day in the life” posts describing my work day. (The last one was here. You can find all the others listed at the bottom.)
8:30am Finally I managed to get a lie-in! Unfortunately this is probably due to poor sleeping due to the fact that I accidentally fell asleep with the radio on (with no sleep function set) and so my entire night was full of the BBC and NPR. Getting ready this morning I realize that every story on NPR is familiar because I probably heard it at 4:00am already. I have poor reception in my bedroom, and so I listen to the radio over the web on a computer. It did not go to sleep, since the radio streaming keeps it active. If I want to fall asleep listening to something, I usually overcome this shortcoming by listening to a podcast, but this time I did not get to starting it before I dozed off. Anyway, tea, cornmeal porridge, coffee. No shirt ironing as I don’t need to be terribly professorial-looking today, much (see below).
I’ll be in semi-stealth mode again today (like Wednesday), in order to focus on research matters, but only semi. Again, I’ve avoided scheduling any meetings today (except one - see below). Although I do not leave for work, I settle down to dealing with various administrative matters. This starts with emails about next week’s colloquium, a future colloquium, and things of that nature. Also check blog, and add entries and begin to clean up the post about yesterday for later appearance.
Continuing the week, here’s Thursday:
I really only get the LA Times on Thursdays, with any regularity. Mostly because I like the Weekend section, which has listings of events coming up, and some interesting feature article or two about some LA thing or person or other. They’ve been interesting to me more often than not, on balance. Not always hugely interesting, but enough for a good 25 minutes read on the bus. The Home section can be good too. So I get it just in case there’s something good. Indeed, it pays off, and there are some good things. I’ll point two of them out in some later blog posts, I hope.
Continuing, here’s a short notebook on Wednesday.
Continuing, this was the Tuesday:
The other day (some weeks ago now) I started a sort of “day in the life” post, to give you more of an idea of what a typical day was like at work (and maybe also a bit at play). Somehow I never finished it, and then I looked at it a while later and could not remember the rest of the day, and so just deleted it.
I’ve decided to do something different. There really is no typical day. So I will try to do a series of days instead. Of course, I’m not going to have tine to sit and do a long, detailed entry about these days, and so instead I’ll just do a sort of sketchy notebook, with some time stamps. From time to time during the day I’ll stop in and add to it, and then post the whole thing at the end of the day before going to sleep. I won’t include all details (I’ll spare you bathroom breaks, personal grooming, and things of that nature, you’ll be pleased to know), but will try to give you some impressions of how the day goes. If people are interested (and people did ask for such a “day in the life post” before), I might try to do them more frequently. But for now, I’ll try and do one for each day of this week. Average over them to get the typical day.
So here goes.
Well, this work week really started on Sunday night.
The other day I was making one of my (half-) joking “kids today” mini-speeches to one of my (very patient) graduate students, Tameem, as part of an IM chat we were having about graduate teaching matters. He then said that he remembered something he wanted to share with me, and IM-ed me this*:
…which I’ll readily admit is both funny and very familiar!
-cvj
(*You can click to make it a bit larger)
[Written a few hours ago on a plane. Later uploaded for your consumption.]
So I’m continuing my thoughts about plans for the Summer. You probably ought to read part I first. This post is also a bit of a ramble. I was thinking a bit more about Spring/Summer travel, you see. There’s a thing I ought to do one of these days which nobody in the field seems to ever do as a Summer travel option:
Why not go back to school?
Students and young postdocs in my field often go to long schools where there are lecture courses in various aspects of a particular topic or selections of topics. Somehow, faculty don’t seem to go to these, and I don’t know why (unless they are lecturing part of the school and sit in on some other lectures, which I’ve done, and it’s always instructive). It is as though there’s some sort of stigma - perhaps we are all supposed to pretend that we know all that stuff and so can’t be seen sitting in a classroom taking notes. But these lecture courses -when done right- are a perfect combination of the basic techniques and the most contemporary results, which can be rare material, and I know of nobody in the field who can honestly claim to be fully in Continue reading ‘Thoughts from Above, II’
[Written a few hours ago on a plane. Later uploaded for your consumption.]
I find myself on a plane to New York (sort of) all of a sudden. I’ll explain later what it’s all about, since I do not yet know to what extent I’m allowed to blog about the details. Let’s just say that it involves dusting off the tuxedo (I can’t recall what we called them in England..dinner suit?) that I bought a couple of years ago. I’ll leave you to guess, if you like, what on earth could involve being thus attired during the daylight hours.
About the tuxedo: I’d decided back then, while preparing to be one of the blushing recipients at an award ceremony, that I’d buy a decent one and get it tailored to fit properly rather than continually rent ones that don’t quite fit right. I decided to gamble that - given the town I live in, where the cold Winter Season is replaced by an Awards Season- it makes sense to own one, especially since my suit measurements have not really changed for the last 20 years or so1.
This blog post is not about anything in particular. It’s really just some random thoughts passing through my head as I fly over the… Oh. well, it was desert last time I looked. But now it’s just cloud, so I’ve no idea what I’m over. A cloud-covered bit of desert, I expect.
Travel Planning
While engaged in this unexpected travel, I’ve realized that it is high time to start planning Spring and Summer travel. Already the spectrum of possibilities is somewhat Continue reading ‘Thoughts from Above, I’
It is on the list of my top five all-time favourite feelings. But I know of no word for it in English that properly captures it. This is strange, since so much of our society relies on things that probably came about in accompaniment with this feeling. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes it come on so strongly that it feels like a switch has been flicked inside my head, with an almost audible “click”, often accompanied by a smile, an oral exclamation, or even a moan. Why can I not think of a word for it? Perhaps my vocabulary is failing me, but if there is not such a word, then we should set about forging a new one, since it is so important.
What am I talking about?
Scanning the listings on the arxiv just now, I found what has to be the best paper title I’ve seen for a while:
“Would Bohr be born if Bohm were born before Born?”
It is a paper by H. Nikolic, in the history of physics classification, and I have not read it, but I love the title. It’s brilliant!
This reminds me of the process that happens to me sometimes when I’m working on a research project. I suddenly think of a really great title, and then get excited about finishing the project so that I can write the paper with that title! (You’ll have noticed that I do that with some of my blog posts too.) It’s often just a nice turn of phrase, like Continue reading ‘Those Fun Paper Titles’
All very mysterious. Can’t tell you anything about it until it is all over. Maybe not even then. Lots of meetings to take place at a hotel or hotels. Locations undisclosed until the last minute. Got the call to pick up my instructions and briefing data from an office. Large white sealed package with just my name on….
On Wednesday night, accompanied by Tameem, a student of mine, I wandered across campus to attend the “Mathematics in Music” event. I blogged about it earlier. I don’t really want to talk about the event itself in this post. It was a nice enough recital of three pieces. I don’t know why, but the promised “mathematics” was disappointingly virtually non-existent. I’m not exaggerating, I’m afraid.
Keep in mind that it may simply just be my misunderstanding of the intent of the event, but there’s simply next to nothing to report in the way of what was said about mathematical aspects of music. There were plenty of opportunities, but (almost) none were taken. I got out my notebook and pen, all excited at what the presenters might say at various points… and the mathematics never showed up. There were a few extremely elementary remarks about tonal ratios in chords, about scales, keys, and time, and that was it, more or less. This was a bit of a shame, since I suspect that Elaine Chew could have talked at length and with some authority on the matter (given the projects she’s involved in - see e.g. here), but mathematics was almost completely missing in the event - despite the title. I imagine there were what seemed like good reasons for this. I was not party to decisions made behind the scenes, so cannot comment further.
More interestingly on that front was what took place in the minutes leading up to the delayed start of the event. First, although it was a free event, they pointed us to the box office where an attendant printed us two tickets from the computer so that we can show them to someone at the door who wasn’t really looking anyway. Fine. We got into the recital hall, but rather than sitting at the obvious available seats, I suggested that we move to the other side of the room where one can get a better view of the piano keyboard. I’m less than happy when I can’t see what a musician is doing, you see, so I always try to sit with the pianist’s view of the piano. So we did that, and found two seats. While we chatted and looked around us at the growing assembly, I spotted a friend and colleague of mine, the composer Veronika Krausas. She was in the company of someone who she introduced as Brian Head, who is a composer, performer (guitar) and music theorist (a “triple threat”, Veronika joked), also in USC’s Thornton school of music. They were looking for seats and there was one on either side of the two we were sitting in, and so they joined us and we chatted some more.
When the event start was about ten or fifteen minutes late -they were trying to get the reassuringly large crown all seated, they announced- Veronika idly looked at her ticket, pointed out that they were numbered, and wondered if we should have been Continue reading ‘Not Improbable’
I love teaching undergraduate electromagnetism. It has such an elegance, logic, and completeness about it. It introduces such a host of powerful techniques and ideas to the student, taking them across the threshold into maturity in their physics studies: Once you’ve done electromagnetism, you don’t usually think about large chunks of Physics in quite the same way ever again.
Today saw me give one of my favourite lectures, in any subject. It’s always a thrill. Summarize all that has gone before in their studies of electromagnetism - Gauss’ Law for the electric field produced by charges, the statement of the absence of magnetic monopoles (the Law with No Name), Faraday’s Law for the electric field produced by changing magnetic fields (induction:- another really fun set of lectures there), and Ampère’s Law for the magnetic fields produced by a current density. Write them all down next to each other and stare at them. Realize that they are not internally consistent, in general, as Maxwell did (he was motivated slightly differently, but in an essentially equivalent way). The culprit is Ampère, and the problem is fixed by Maxwell’s realization of the existence of the displacement current term. Ah… symmetry. Changing electric fields produce magnetic fields. All is well. Do some nice examples to show how it all works in concrete terms.
The resulting beautiful and consistent set of equations sent a shiver down my spine when I first saw and appreciated them as an undergraduate. They still send a shiver down my spine, and I hope your spine shivers too. Maxwell’s equations:
After the shiver, a lovely warm feeling. From here to light, radiation, Relativity, and beyond…
Every time, I especially love giving this lecture. It never gets old.
-cvj
I don’t know why this possibility did not occur to me before. So let me give you a heads up if you do demos in your lectures. In Physics 100 (which I taught last semester) and in Astro 100 especially, we do a lot of demos to demonstrate various physics concepts. I did a post on the Newton’s third law jet propulsion demo some time ago (linked photo right). My colleague Ed Rhodes did this same demo in his Astro 100 class.
He received an email from one of the students in the class recently saying “Congratulations, you’ve been YouTubed…”.
Apparently, one of the students in the class used his or her mobile phone camera to Continue reading ‘Unexpectedly On YouTube’
“..It’s pretty serious.”
“Yeah…” (chuckle) “…right!”
“No, it is serious… Your smoothies are going to be more expensive.”
(Silence, as the enormity of this economic revelation sinks in…)
* * *
Part of a conversation I overheard between two students while I waited for a class to start. One student was apparently a bit dismissive of the other’s concern about the effects of the recent sustained cold temperatures on the local farmers. He did not see why she was concerned about the farmers. She could have Continue reading ‘Citrus’
Well, it’s the middle of the Bleak Midwinter, and the first day of classes of the new semester. Mine start tomorrow. It is time to get myself back into the classroom-teaching frame of mind -although to be honest I don’t think the break was long enough for me to have got sufficiently far removed from it: 85% of the research tasks that I wanted to do during the break remain undone.
Anyway, I must sit and contemplate what I am going to talk about in the graduate course entitled “Selected Topics in Particle Physics”. It’s my lunch break, so I thought I’d chat to you for a bit.
Rumour has it that everyone is expecting some sort of string theory course, reasonably complementary to the one that my colleague Nick Warner taught here two years ago. I’ve no interest in just teaching the standard string theory topics - a good and motivated graduate student can just look them up in a book if motivated enough (if they can’t they’re in the wrong business) - and so I’d like to throw in some material that is not packaged together in the standard way, and give them an education that emphasizes powerful ideas and techniques that are relevant to more than just standard string theory research, but theoretical physics in general.
You see, this is one of the wonderful things about the topic that you don’t hear about much when people say things (and write books for a general audience) about how much it is supposedly taking over smart young minds and leading them astray: It is a fantastic framework for training good physicists for whatever new and useful ideas and physics will come along in the future, whether it is string theory or some other topic. The point is that string theory has developed in so many different ways, and Continue reading ‘All Hands on Deck’
The other day, in a nice cafe on the boardwalk at Venice beach, I was working with Veselin Filev, a student of mine, on a paper that he would later submit to the arXiv. The end of the year was approaching and I wandered off into some irrelevant anecdote or other (as I am wont to do), explaining to him a bit about little traditions concerning the arXiv, from the “old days”. I mentioned in passing that one last tradition will come to an end because the numbering system for papers will all change sometime this year (apparently the mathematicians are close to producing too many papers in each month - more than the 1000 the system can handle1.)
I explained that in days of yore, some people would try to get the very first paper of the year, so that they would have a rather special number, of the form hep-th/XX01001, where XX denotes the year. By far the coolest of these was Continue reading ‘Last of the First’
