PY 482 Junior/Senior Physics Seminar (Spring 2013)


 
Course Information (including schedule of weekly talks) and my office hours.     (January 15, 2013)

Reminder: Second essay due at 5pm on Monday May 6. The essay should be the same format is the first essay. Please send it as a pdf file; NOT as a MS word file. The essay should be about some new physics that you've learned in the last six talks.

Reminder: First essay due in class on Thursday March 7. The essay should be of 2-3 pages in length in 10-point font and single spacing. The essay should be about some new physics that you've learned in the first seven talks.


WEEKLY LECTURES

January 17, Professor Sid Redner, Fate of the Kinetic Ising Model  Lecture Slides

January 24, Professor H. Eugene Stanley, Physics of Complex Systems with Applications to Liquid State Physics, Econophysics, and Failure Cascades in Interdependent Networks  Abstract  Lecture Slides

January 31, Professor Karl Ludwig, Making Functional Surfaces and Thin Films - Where are the Atoms?  Abstract  Lecture Slides

February 7, Professor Pankaj Mehta, Thermodynamics of cellular computation   Abstract  Lecture Slides

February 14, Professor David Campbell, Nonlinearity meets Quantum Mechanics  Abstract  Lecture Slides
Here is some background reading for this talk---an article from Physics Today, from Physical Review, and the seminal article by R. M. May that popularized non-linear dynamics. I also heartily recommend the popular book by James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science.

February 21, Professor Bennett Goldberg, Graphene pulled across a surface violates Amonton's force law that states increasing the load increases friction  Lecture Slides

February 28, Professor Kevin Smith, Studying Metal to Insulator Transitions in Solids using Synchrotron Radiation-based Spectroscopies  Abstract   Lecture Slides
Here is some background reading for this talk---a review article by Kevin Smith.

March 7, Professor Michael El-Batanouny, Surface Physics of Topological Insulators: Massless Electrons and Massive Ions  Abstract  Lecture Slides

March 21, Professor William Klein, A Physicist's View of Earthquakes; What Can We Learn from Simple Models?  Abstract  Lecture Slides

March 28, Professor Anders Sandvik, Quantum magnetism  Abstract  Lecture Slides      Class Lecture Cancelled for Chertok Colloquium

April 4, Professor Claudio Chamon, Fractionalization of the Electron  Abstract  Lecture Slides

April 11, Professor Rama Bansil, Gels, Bacteria and Ulcers  Abstract  Lecture Slides
Here are two articles that provide useful background reading for this talk an article about mucin and one about the bacterium H pylori.

April 25, Professor Rick Averitt, Introduction to Metamaterials   Abstract  Lecture Slides

May 2, Professor Shyam Erramilli, The God Quasiparticle: the Plasmon and Infrared Spectroscopy of Proteins  Abstract  Lecture Slides