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ICAM Leaders Contribute to Online Course, Physics for the 21st Century

Sun, September 18, 2011

Several ICAM leaders have played key roles in the development and writing of an online physics course released in the fall of 2010.  In partnership with Annenberg Media, Physics for the 21st Century is produced by the Science Media Group (SMG), a division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  The 11-unit course is designed for adult learners without a background in science.  It offers information on advances in physics in an accessible, interactive format.

ICAM leaders, as experts in their respective fields, have contributed to course content. David Pines, ICAM’s Founding Co-Director, wrote the text for Unit 8:  “Emergent Behavior in Quantum Matter” and enlisted Piers Coleman of Rutgers University and Paul Chaikin of New York University to appear as featured scientists in the associated video materials for the Unit.

While “Emergent Behavior in Quantum Matter” may seem an ethereal topic even to an educated public, Pines distills complex information into ‘nuggets’ accessible to readers of many different ages, educational experiences, and interests.  He focuses on superconductivity, which Pines calls a poster child for emergent behavior in matter, and outlines many important historical contributions to this field (including the contributions of less historicized scientists) – even noting some of the many ‘failed’ theories of superconductivity. He describes a key step in the successful development a microscopic theory by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer:  “The breakthrough came in January 1957, when Bardeen’s graduate student, Robert Schrieffer, while riding a New York City subway train following a conference in Hoboken, NJ on The Many-Body Problem, wrote down a candidate wavefunction for the ground state and began to calculate its low-lying excited states.”  Pines uses an analogy involving pairs of dancers on a dance floor to illustrate the BCS theory, which explained, over 50 years ago, all aspects of the so-called conventional superconductors. He then discusses its recent application to understanding the new families of superconductors discovered during the past 25 years, including the so-called high T_c materials, translating seemingly complex scientific concepts into tangible ideas accessible to the curious reader.

In Unit 8, we learn that scientists have varied methods for exploring the principles behind emergent phenomena.  While Coleman, a theoretical physicist, looks at the world of quantum matter with particular attention to materials that possess what is called a quantum critical point, Chaikin, an experimentalist, uses whatever probes he deems useful to study the behavior of soft matter, including a most unconventional research tool:  M&M chocolate candies.

In the video, Chaikin explains how a simple experiment he completed using M&Ms changed a commonly held theory about packing density.  This experiment, inspired by Chaikin’s “coffee and chocolate” lunch habit, demonstrated that packing density improved with ellipsoid (rather than spherical) objects.

Coleman, a theoretical physicist, seeks to define rules that govern emergent behavior (the kind of behavior that is the focus of experimental physicists, like Chaikin).  Coleman finds that the scientist’s “canvas” – the periodic table – offers infinite and unimaginable possibilities.  The video shows that one of Coleman’s projects involved looking at a metal that, when slightly modified, became magnetic.  According to Coleman, the rule that explained the behavior of this modified substance told us that “the old paradigm [of metals] was breaking down.”  This discovery has continued to spark other experiments and theories regarding the behavior of metals at critical points.

Coleman sees many correlations between the work of scientists and artists.  He says, “Physicists are really much more like an impressionist painter or a haiku poet.  What they want to do is condense out of the complexity the essence of the physics.”  These connections are corroborated by the information available on Coleman’s website http://musicofthequantum.rutgers.edu/ as well as at http://emergentuniverse.org, both of which are affiliated with ICAM.

The online text for Unit 9:  “Biophysics” was written by Robert Austin of Princeton.  This unit truly brings physics ‘to life’ as it focuses on the question, “Is it possible to describe living systems, or even small pieces of living systems, with the same concepts developed elsewhere in our ramble through physics?”  In short, in addition to applying theoretical physics to living systems, Unit 9 does, in fact, address cosmic concerns.  As Austin writes, “We begin with a discussion of whether physics can tell us if something is, in fact, alive.”  Austin uses a chicken egg as a point of departure for his discussion.  Though an egg might seem mundane at first, Austin reminds us that this egg is, in fact, a complex, intricately designed biological system. 

Unit 9 explores other topics, including The Emergent Genome, Free Energy Landscapes, and Evolution.  One of Austin’s closing sections is “The Emergence of the Mind,” where he explains differences between the functioning of a human mind and that of a computer – and even that of a hummingbird, a small (but as we learn, not simple!) creature. 

In Physics for the 21st Century, David Pines, Robert Austin, Piers Coleman, and Paul Chaikin, like good scientists, adeptly take complex phenomena and convey them in simply yet comprehensively to an educated and curious public.  Perhaps more importantly, they teach us that what might be complicated can actually be quite simple; what might appear simple is actually quite complex.  Finally, they show us the artistic beauty surrounding us and help us to understand it, wherever it may be – under a microscope, outside our window, or in our own mind.

Physics for the 21st Century is available free of charge to the public.  To access, visit: http://www.learner.org/courses/physics/index.html.

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