scientific literacy Those who have seen the new "Electronic Secretary" here will, of course, want to include one on their own site. The problem with Site Pal, though, is that in order to use the 15-day free trial, you have to select a payment package first!
It will be interesting to predict what will happen to traffic on "The Reference Frame" during the next few weeks. Will the new secretary annoy a lot of people, or will she have a positive affect? I think the former is more likely.
"The best physics blog", as well as all the others, have really made esoteric concepts in science a lot more accessible. This has been a plus, but... it has also had negative consequences, like the infamous Slate article. The author of the aforementioned article thought he knew more than he actually did about modern science; either that, or he was just trying to throw a wrench in the works (or an infinity in the equation)! Too often, those who are interested in advanced scientific concepts won't actually investigate them. If they do investigate them, they do it badly. Reading a popular physics book doesn't qualify you as a physicist; that alone doesn't qualify you to be a science journalist, either. I wish more people knew that.
At the Mensa conference two weeks ago, I heard numerous conversations that went something like this:
"What brought you to this conference?"
"Well, I was really interested in physics and stuff. I read The Elegant Universe and thought that was cool, although I could never understand all those extra dimensions."
"Yeah, me neither."
Wow. What a profound conversation.
Unfortunately, I heard a lot of those. I ran into only a handful of physicists and physics students; the majority of people didn't have much of a scientific background. I know that because of the questions people asked the speakers. Some of them (I'm not referring to the speakers here) really flaunted their ignorance. It's a good thing the scientists were patient; I wouldn't have answered most of the questions.
If more science journalists were scientifically literate, scientists wouldn't have so many problems. They'd have a better chance of getting grants, and... perhaps the barrier between the "two cultures" would fall. No one likes that barrier anyway.  ¶ 4:15 PM 0 comments

  an inconvenient falsehood? Does global warming really exist?
If so, is it going to affect the earth's climate adversely by 2025?

I find it highly unusual that global warming is such a popular "scientific" topic these days. How much has the earth's temperature increased in the last five years? The answer depends on a given region of the earth. Some areas are getting hotter; others are getting colder, and some have remained at about the same temperature. It doesn't take a scientist to figure that out.
Stephen Hawking has been quite concerned about global warming... so concerned that he mentioned it at a string theory conference. I think he should have another bet with Kip Thorne and John Preskill about it...
Of course, Lubos Motl has a counter on his site that shows how critical he is of the Kyoto Protocol. It's hard to imagine that it's cost the world $250 trillion, considering it's done nothing at all.
It's even harder to imagine that the IPCC is trying to predict the world's temperature gain for the next 90+ years!
I'm from the state that's first in chemical production (New Jersey). The carbon emissions from all the factories in Union and Essex Counties must be enormous. They used to be worse; now factories are more heavily regulated. Has the climate in North Jersey changed since those factories were built? No! And they've been there for a long time!
That's just one example. The global warming "crisis" has received far too much attention. Is there going to be a divide between climate scientists who are researching global warming and those who aren't, similar to the "divide" between LQG theorists and string theorists? I think a book called "The Trouble with Climatology" is in order.  ¶ 5:33 PM 0 comments

  what's the confidence level of THIS measurement? The Reference Frame's latest posting deals with the connection between students' levels of confidence and their actual performance in math. I read this article yesterday also, but I was not convinced at all by its arguments.
In case anyone had no idea, I really like math. And I have liked math since before I was in school. I even played with a calculator on just about every car trip I took as a toddler. Seriously. In eighth grade, I tried developing my own number systems, such as the "extreme number" system (a set of numbers that were all divisible by 0) along with another system based on the idea that for every number v, v + (any integer) = v. I also found a really unusual relation between the numbers pi and phi, which I have not seen written up anywhere. I've thought about turning it into a paper.
Anyway, the CNN article essentially states that American students don't perform as well in math because they're too confident. While that may seem like an oversimplification (it is), I will argue that American students don't perform as well because they don't see math as a language. A typical college-level calculus book could be 1000 pages or more, and last a student three semesters. Yet a lot of much older books are a lot smaller, and I've found them to be just as useful in explaining the material. (I have a fairly large collection of them.) One of my favorite old math books, Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus, contains several topics one would RARELY see in a calc book these days, such as applications of the gudermannian function. In case anyone didn't know, it's the arctan of the hyperbolic sine. It's a powerful function, but how many people have heard of it?
Math textbooks rely too much on examples and illustrations, which are necessary to some extent, but not on every page. The Schaum's outlines, not regular textbooks, are better-suited for that purpose. Perhaps the enormous size of most textbooks is a push to increase the price of the books, which equals... more money for the authors and a lot less money for the students who have to pay $100+ for a book they're required to have. Or it's just an intimidation factor for not-so-mathematically-inclined students, who don't have much interest in epsilon-delta definitions or Riemann sums...
But calculus books aren't even the big problem. The multitude of courses for liberal arts majors- who are (falsely) presumed not to have as much interest in math as the science/engineering majors- are... frought with problems. "Modern Mathematical Concepts" or "Finite Math" are just euphemisms for "Liberal Arts, General Education Math Courses." I might be too demanding here, but I think everyone in college should have a working knowledge of some calculus at the end of their freshman year. Students aren't going to get much out of math if they learn "modern concepts" that aren't even as modern as calculus! The same goes for science courses; I'm appalled by the extremely qualitative (read: non-technical) nature of so many of them. You won't learn much about quantum physics or relativity if you can't do the calculations.
End of rant.
I've decided to change the layout of this site... to some extent. I removed my "I am Pro-Victory" banner, even though I am pro-victory, because it is somewhat of an ambiguous statement. I also can't make this site look too much like the Reference Frame, either. I'd experimented with the NeoCounter earlier, but when only 2 visitors showed up on it (even though there have been close to 200 visits since September 3), I got rid of that immediately.  ¶ 4:48 PM 2 comments

  not even silent "Not Even Wrong" hasn't been updated in five days...
That really strikes me as odd. The Reference Frame is updated almost every day, usually several times a day. Have the anti-string bloggers fled the scene...?
No, of course not.
Now that the fall semester is more than half-over, we've gotten to the real details in quantum physics. Like the different terms in the wavefunction if a particle goes through a barrier: reflection and transmission coefficients, the wavevector k versus the kappa reflecting term, etc. We're starting three-dimensional problems next week, which are beyond the scope of Volume 1 of Understanding Quantum Physics.
For those who aren't familiar with this textbook... you're not missing much. I think the book's title is its worst problem; it makes quantum physics out to be understandable. Does it clarify quantum physics? Not much. Is it useful in giving someone the sense of calculational difficulties in quantum physics? Absolutely. Are the problems ridiculously long, even if they're not difficult? Absolutely.
I do enjoy the various literary quotes at the beginning of each lesson, though. Understanding Quantum Physics does prove that one of the "two cultures" is... more advanced than the other... for the most part.  ¶ 10:25 PM 0 comments

  the REAL trouble with physics The problems with unification, string theory, etc. are nothing compared to the real trouble with physics.
Here are several assertions:
1. The anthropic principle needs a lot more support than it gets. I've already talked about this. It's not "giving up" or "metaphysics." It's not philosophy.
2. Whatever happened to physics education? Why are there courses like "Physics for Poets" or "Physics for Future Presidents"? Because liberal arts students can't handle physics? I'm sure a lot of them can... and I'm not talking about the aforementioned watered-down courses.
3. Why don't engineers have to take more physics? Why are there separate "physics-related" courses like the ones here, when there are similar courses taught at physics departments? If AEP is trying to "apply these disciplines to technical problems without regard to formal or historical boundaries between various fields of engineering and physics", then why do they have to take far more engineering than physics courses?

There are serious problems with math education, too. At my local county college, there are engineering and physics programs, but very few sections of higher-level math classes. Take a look at this and sift through the thirty-some sections of Algebra 1 before you finally get to the two sections of Calculus II and III. Scroll down more; as of Fall '06, there is only ONE section of General Physics II. Nothing higher than that is listed.

I've got nothing more to say.  ¶ 4:37 PM 0 comments

  Physics: A Universal Discipline? Since physicists often complain about the lack of jobs, funding, etc. in academic physics, I am going to proclaim the following truths:
According to Georgetown's physics department website (http://www.physics.georgetown.edu/premed.htm ), "...physics majors are more likely to be accepted into medical school than majors from all biological sciences or chemistry." Now that's incredible. Who would have thought that biology or chemistry wouldn't be as helpful as physics in preparing students for medical school? (That question is mine alone.) Isn't physics just some ivory-tower subject that lazy people take if they don't like the complexity that the other sciences stress? (I've actually heard that question more times than I want to remember.) Don't the "emergent properties" of biology cause a macroscopic system to be more than the sum of its parts? (I've heard that many times also.)
My answer to those last two questions would be, "Physics is the easiest and hardest science." Granted, the chemical properties of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate are harder to study than, say, the motion of a ball on a frictionless straight line with no external forces. Much harder. But...
Understanding Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism is harder than understanding NADP, or the evolution of beak shapes of Galapagos finches, or the movements of mRNA. Studying SU(3) Lie groups in the strong interaction is... well... HARD! Even a usually-not-too-difficult-to-solve equation like -hbar^2[(del^2)psi]/(2m)+V(psi)=i*hbar*d(psi)/dt (the time-dependent Schrodinger equation, of course) can be really difficult to solve in certain physical situations. Just understanding how a particle behaves in an infinite square well is... complicated. Systems in physics that look simple contain a lot of complexity. Those who have taken more than intro courses in physics have realized that complexity increases as you go down to more fundamental levels. That's quite shocking, but it's the way the universe works.
With the lack of funding and jobs in physics, a lot more physicists are entering other professions, like law, economics, engineering, management, and... just about everything else. Economics and physics coalesced to form econophysics, which is designed to give more accurate models in economic theory. (Economics would be useless without accurate mathematical descriptions of what is actually happening; you can't draw just any aggregate demand curve, for example. Who would have thought that partial differential equations could be just as useful in economics as physics? Econophysicists would.)
I hope everyone will realize that physics really is a universal subject. "Complexity" can't get in its way. When the unified theory is discovered (which will only happen if scientists see the value of the anthropic principle), physics really will explain everything.
Of course, that will only happen if there really is a unified theory.  ¶ 10:20 PM 1 comments

  more about the colloquium I will backtrack now.
Right after I checked in at the Albany Marriott, and then at the colloquium registration area, I looked around for famous physicists, Nobel Prize-winners, science journalists (good or bad), etc. I saw no one. I couldn't believe that there were only a handful of scientists at this event. From all the conversations I heard, most people were Mensans who were (somewhat) interested in physics; I heard a lot of statements like:
"Well, I read The Elegant Universe and thought that was cool."
"I still can't get over that idea of extra dimensions, anyway."
"Aren't dark matter and dark energy the same thing?"
Needless to say, I was quite worried. Were these people going to ask stupid questions that the proverbial "average person on the street" could answer? Some did. So as to avoid libeling anyone, I will not reprint the questions here.
I have to admit that some people's disdain for the anthropic principle was irksome. At least two of the speakers referred to the anthropic principle as "giving up." All of the speakers mentioned the principle, but they didn't say anything about the entropic interpretation or other more advanced versions of the principle. I don't think the anthropic principle is a deference to metaphysics at all. It is a serious scientific argument, and should be treated as such.
If it weren't for those two factors, the colloquium certainly would have lived up to its title. I almost thought it would be a "revolution in cosmology", considering the hot debate that occurred after Brian Greene's talk.
Dr. Greene's lecture was by far the longest. I'd heard rumors that some people were trying to crash the lecture; those people had not registered for the colloquium but had intended just to hear that lecture. At the beginning, he asked, "Are there any Yankees fans here?" A few brave people raised their hands. He continued, "Drink more wine; it's over." This resulted in cries of anguish from Yankee fans and applause from Red Sox fans like myself. :)
Then he said, "This lecture's called 'The State of String Theory.' It sounds a lot like the State of the Union address, but there are three big differences:
1. I'm not the President.
2. I will describe the developments in string theory.
3. I will tell you the truth."
I'd never heard an audience applaud so enthusiastically before.
His lecture was quite technical; he described how extra dimensions were curled up in a Kahler manifold, how one must solve a system of differential equations to find string energies, etc. He also showed most of the animations from the series The Elegant Universe and tried to describe those, but most people were already too confused to understand even the animations.
After the lecture (and after he answered questions from the audience), there was a panel discussion. Surprisingly, Dr. Smolin was in the panel; I knew right away that this would be a heated discussion. Greene asserted that Smolin's statement about string theory "falling away from the scientific method" was very wrong, and that The Trouble with Physics was very damaging. Smolin went through a long, long explanation of his statements, in order to provide a counterexample. He tried, but all he actually did was dodge the question. I saw Dr. Greene roll his eyes once.
To add more energy to this thermodynamic system, Dr. Jeremiah Ostriker (who gave a lecture about dark matter on Saturday) said his wife claimed that string theory was a "thinking person's version of intelligent design." The audience made a few interesting noises, but Dr. Greene told the panel something like, "Unless we can corroborate string theory, we cannot claim that it is right." More discussions followed, but they came to an end just before Marc Millis was going to say something.
I got Dr. Greene's autograph afterwards, and I praised the technical nature of his lecture. Other people told him that as well, and he thanked us.  ¶ 10:16 PM 3 comments

  7 lectures for a revolution This was an incredible colloquium, and it was an incredible weekend for physics.
Oddly enough, there have not been any mentions of it on the two most-widely-linked-to physics blogs... so I will explain what happened... over the next few days. There's too much to write in just one posting.
I had intended to blog from the conference, but since hotels charge for Internet access, I decided against it.
I think everyone was quite starstruck this weekend; I know I was. These lecturers are some of the biggest names in physics, in part because of their ability to clarify arcane subjects, but also because of their debates. And there certainly was QUITE A DEBATE last night.
Dr. Smolin's talk was by far the most astonishing of the seven. I'd expected it to be a diatribe of string theory. But even The Trouble with Physics wasn't much of a diatribe. In his lecture, he stated that he'd switched his focus in research from LQG to string theory and back... not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. He said LQG was practiced by "a few weirdos" like himself.
The most interesting (and funniest) part was when he showed a slide of successes and failures in theoretical physics. He had decided that most of the recent efforts in theoretical physics were failures, including... (be prepared for this) "my PhD thesis and the project after my PhD thesis."
What really shocked me was when he described all the other fringe theories his friends are working on. One was DSR, which I think stands for "double special relativity." One of the ideas in DSR is that spacetime can be quantized, which really isn't that new of an idea. But then... he described one theory that treats the universe as a superconductor.
It really makes string theory look good, doesn't it?
His lecture was excellent, though, and I told him that. He asked me what I was studying, so I told him physics, and I was shocked that he was happy about that. You wouldn't expect someone who wrote a book called The Trouble with Physics to want someone to go into physics. In fact, his autograph reads: "To Alexander, Best of Luck with Physics." He was very different in real life from the way the media (and many other physicists) have portrayed him.
I will discuss the other lectures in subsequent blogs.  ¶ 9:45 PM 0 comments

  oh well... I'm really excited about tomorrow.
But...
I went into the science center today and asked a few of the other physics professors if they knew about the "Revolutions in Cosmology" conference and/or were going to it. They hadn't even heard of it. Even the astrophysics department at RPI didn't know about it. It's shocking enough that an astrophysics department at a top 50 university wouldn't know about this conference, but it's even more shocking if you consider that it's taking place only about four miles away!
What's weird about RPI is that although it's a world leader in physics education (one of the authors of "Fundamentals of Physics"- the most-widely used undergrad physics textbook- is an emeritus professor here), we don't have ANY researchers in string theory or cosmology. We have one of the largest departments in the country, but we don't have string theory or cosmology, the areas of physics that are getting the most coverage these days. One gets the impression from the leading physics bloggers (well, at least the dissenters) that if you're not a postdoc in string theory, you won't get a faculty position. It's absolute nonsense. We have NO ONE in string theory here. NO ONE in cosmology, but some astronomers and astrophysicists. We have a lot of professors in more applied areas like optics, photonics, terahertz research, and condensed matter. We have some experimental physicists and particle theorists (but not LQG/ string people). We have a class or two in general relativity, but those are only 4000-level (mainly for advanced undergrads). We don't have "string theory for undergraduates" (or grad students). We don't have a whole lot of astronomy courses; general relativity is the most advanced one.
You would get the impression from physics bloggers and people who write pro-string (or anti-string) books that the string theory controversy is what physics is all about. Not so! I haven't heard anyone, in the two and a half semesters I've been here, talking about "the trouble with physics". (I'm not referring to the book.) "Anyone" refers to students (in any department) and professors (in any department.) You would get the impression that physics is a subject you could study for... well, about ten years or so, then do research in as a postdoc, and then end up unemployed. Sometimes that happens, but eventually you will find a job, not necessarily in physics, but one that you could apply your advanced knowledge in. The Columbia University math department contains such an example.
I think the trouble with physics is enormously exaggerated, mainly by the horrible coverage that physics has gotten in the past few months. I still think physics is the most exciting thing you could possibly study, and I don't think anyone should be discouraged from studying it. Here's a discouraging essay: http://www.physics.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html
I think that essay is self-explanatory, but if you look at the other essays on his site, you'll probably find them even more alarming. I'm sure he's an excellent professor, but I'm shocked that some of those writings haven't gotten him in major trouble.

Incidentally, I got "The Trouble with Physics" in the mail today, just before the colloquium. I'm very anxious to read it, since I will meet the author this weekend.

And that's the memo.  ¶ 5:42 PM 0 comments

  Go, Lubos, Go! The "Reference Frame" has its best posting yet: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/10/curricular-anti-academic-coup.html
Wow. I really do not want to see Harvard adopt this. Check out the proposed "core curriculum" and you'll understand.
I couldn't imagine Harvard with a core like this. The one at Columbia is ridiculous enough, but this one is even worse. First of all, why is there just ONE physical science course? Even a math course isn't required! Students at arguably (if you're insane enough to argue) the most elite university in the world aren't even required to take calculus? Or physics (physical science could be chemistry or geology instead)? What kind of "elite" university would Harvard become?
Here are the requirements of some of the TECHNOLOGICAL universities:
RPI requires a year of calculus (of some variety.) There's the standard Calc 1 and 2 sequence, and there's the Calc for Management/HSS with Contemporary Math Ideas sequence. If you're an engineer, you have to take diff eq (unless you're an EE, in which case you need multivariable). If you're a physics major, you take diff eq, multivariable, and advanced calc (I'm in advanced calc right now). I'm not sure what the science requirements are for all the majors, but everyone has to take a good amount of science...
MIT requires 8.01 and 8.02, which have the famous video lectures that I loved to watch in Physics C in high school. They also require 18.01 and 18.02 (or calculus with theory). They manage to compress single-variable calculus in one semester; Cornell's engineering program does the same.
Caltech requires FIVE quarters of math (single-variable calc, linear algebra, multivariable, diff eq, and probability) and FIVE of physics, in addition to biology and chemistry. For every student.

Harvard may have lost its "elite" status...

Now for good news: the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded yesterday to TWO physicists who worked on projects measuring the anisotropy of the CMBR.
Congratulations.  ¶ 8:06 PM 0 comments

  conference I have a temporary schedule of events at this cosmology conference. There are lectures Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Surprisingly, it ends on Sunday; maybe the organizers figured they should give everyone time to go home on Columbus Day. While a lot of my college friends will be going home that weekend, I will be attending my first physics conference with some of the biggest names in the world.
I'm amazed that they're having a cocktail hour Friday night; they probably figure that everyone's 21 and over. (I'm not even 19 yet.) I won't turn 21 until after college, hopefully during my first semester of grad school.
Anyway... the Reference Frame has a LONG posting: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/10/falsifiability-in-physics.html
on how string theory can be... falsified?! Actually, the beginning of the posting states that string theory can't be falsified... but then it can? I didn't think it made much sense, and since it got only about two comments, virtually everyone else didn't understand it, either.
I hope that whoever wins the Nobel Prize tomorrow will understand it. Who knows, maybe one of the Nobelists had signed up for the physics conference... too bad he or she wouldn't be able to go to the ceremonies and the conference!  ¶ 8:51 PM 0 comments