The Society of Physics Students at UC Santa Cruz

The Society of Physics Students at UCSC PRESENTS:

A General Meeting: “Divide and conquer” and “United we stand” in physics.

Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009 

Time: 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Place: ISB 231

This week, SPS will host a talk by Professor Gey-Hong Gweon, of the Physics Dept. In his own words he will talk about:

“Divide and conquer” is a very useful mathematical strategy in many physics problems.  One may also interpret this maxim as a generally useful approach to science, in the long tradition of the reductionist ideal of the ancient Greeks.  However, in Nature we observe many collective emergent behaviors that are not captured well by this reductionist thinking.  We may call these emergent behaviors as Nature’s “united we stand” way of existence.  In this talk, I will discuss various examples of such behaviors in condensed matter systems, e.g. the superconductivity, and how studies of these behaviors have been shaping our views of fundamental physics.

SPS Movie Night

12 Monkeys will be shown at Thimann 3 on November 6th 2009.

Show will start at 7:00 o’clock post meridiem.

popcorn included

The Society of Physics Students at UCSC PRESENTS:

A General Meeting: “The Bare Essentials of Particle Physics”

Date: Thursday, October 22, 2009

Time: 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Place: ISB 231

Be there or be quadrilateral!

This week Prof. Jason Nielsen (Department of Physics and Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics) will offer tips and tricks to solve those particle physics problems at relativistic speeds!

In his own words:

The Society of Physics Students at UCSC

General Meeting: “From classical to Quantum Phase Transitions”and Graduate School Info about Rice University Thursday, October 15, 2009

Time: 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Place: ISB 231

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So grab your bongos and come on over to party with your favorite physicists at SPS.

Here are some links as promised by our speaker Brandon Allgood cofounder of Numerate Inc.

Association of Research Libraries
http://www.arl.org/

SPARC
http://www.arl.org/sparc/

Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of
Scientific Publishing
http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/mmproceedings/138guedon.shtml

The ArXiv
http://arxiv.org/

Budapest Open Access Initiative
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/

Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org/

Eprints
http://www.eprints.org/

Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Open Access at UCSC
http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=1970

PRISM
http://www.prismcoalition.org/index.htm

NIH open access policy
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

Current threat against NIH open policy
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:H.R.801:

Open Access Directory
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page

Science Commons
http://sciencecommons.org/

freeculture.org
http://freeculture.org

PLoS
http://www.plos.org/

MIT portal for staff publications
http://dspace.mit.edu/

wikipedia article with great links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_(publishing)

Last week’s Undergraduate Symposium was definitely a success, full of tensors, Tesla Coil’s and Exosolar Planets. There really is no way we could possibly do better.

Except for maybe this week.

This week the Society of Physics Students is proud to present the second half of our Undergraduate Symposium! The SPS meeting will be held on Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 6 P.M. in ISB 231. This will be a conference style event. In that fashion the speakers will have 12 minutes to present and 3 minutes for questions. It will  be moderated by Professor Peter Young of the Physics Dept.

This week’s speakers are:

• Assia Tolpygo: “Understanding Brain Function Through Large-Scale Retinal Output Activity”

• Kyle Kaplan: “Dust Absorption in Metal Strong Damped Lyman Alpha Systems”

• Megan Shabram: “Transiting Extrasolar Planet Transmission Spectra”

Your attendendace, as always, is kindly requested.

This week SPS is proud to present an Undergraduate Symposium on Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 6:00 PM in Isb 231! This week we have three speakers:

Josh Vinson: Tesla Coil Science
Nick Ernst: An Introduction to Tensors
Ben Nelson: Exosolar Planets and finding Terrestrial Planets

Moderated by Professor Haber.

Each speaker will present for 10-12 minutes, and afterward answer a few questions.

‘Open Science’

Open Science was the original goal of the world wide web (WWW), when Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN created a system for high energy particle physicists to share data and information.  It was such a promising beginning.  What happened?  As the world marches on with open source software, open media, open publishing, and all of the other openness that the WWW has inspired, science is being left behind in publishing and data sharing.  Science journals are online, but publishing in a journal few have access to, in an archaic format that has far less to do with the digital age that it does 1980s is not innovative.  The current Open Science movement is trying to change this.  Actions such as the recent vote by MIT faculty to make all scholarly publications openly available and efforts such as those by the Science Commons (a Creative Commons project) are signs that things are changing, but the movement is still in its infancy.  A lot of thought and action must still happen at all levels: government policy, university policy, publishing industry, and individual scientific attitude.  I will discuss the current movement, it’s history, and what still needs to be done to bring science into the open century.

&

‘Science outside of Academia’

I would also like to talk about my experience doing science outside of academia and what I would do if I were at UCSC preparing for the job market.

Coffee, tea and snacks will be provided. Although I know that’s not why you’ll be there.

A link to Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=4qYorOpfB6EC&dq=meeting+the+universe+halfway&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

Luckily, we have a great quarter lined up for you guys.

The first meeting will be  Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 6:00 P.M.in ISB 231/235. Speaking will be Prof. Karen Barad who although is a faculty member of the Feminist Studies dept. recieved her Ph.D. in  Theoretical Particle Physics at SUNY Stony Brook

..

NOTE : This week’s SPS meeting will be at a STRANGE TIME: 4:00 PM and note the EVEN STRANGER PLACE: THIMANN 1

Nothing brings out the true physicist in each of us as discharging a million volts onto our favorite professor Stefano Profumo, and our favorite undergrad Carlin Fuerst.  (Which was a clever ploy to trick the unknowing Jessica into the suit of armor)

This week SPS@UCSC will be having a JOINT meeting with the Physics Colloquium.

The Santa Cruz Institue for Particle Physics‘ Outreach  program will demonstrate for you the coil which the Master of Lightning, Nikola Tesla, used to amaze and frighten many people.  They do regular demonstrations to inspire people in schools K-College to pursue the sciences, and learn about physics. So, if you think you would like to be a part of their team come to the demo for more information and lots of fun.

Bring your friends so they too can be amazed by the Tesla Coil, and celebrate all of Tesla’s scientific contributions to the world.

Coffee, tea and snacks will be provided. Everyone is welcome.

Join us after for pizza and dis-charge in ISB 231

The SCIPP Outreach/Tesla Coil Website is here:

http://scipp.ucsc.edu/outreach/tesla/teslacoil/

In 1975 Stapp called Bell’s Theorem “the most profound discovery of science.” In Kuttner’s words:

Bell’s theorem and the experiments resulting from it have answered some age-old philosophical questions about the nature of reality.  I will discuss a little of the history behind his theorem, give a simple derivation of the theorem, and discuss the experimental results and their implications.

• Are there local hidden variables in entagled pairs of particles?
• Or, how does Bell’s Theorem show the impossibilty of local realism?
• Are conscioussness and the physical world intimately connected?
• Was this e-mail sent because you checked your email, or is it still in my Outbox?

Coffee, tea and snacks will be provided.

And Alain Aspect’s view on Bell’s Theorem is here:

http://www-ece.rice.edu/~kono/ELEC565/Aspect_Nature.pdf

SPEAKER: David Williams of the UCSC Pysics Dept.

THIS WEEK’S MEETING WILL BE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2009

VERITAS (the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System)
is a system of four 12-m aperture optical reflectors used to study
sources very high-energy gamma rays, with energy greater than about 100 GeV.
It is located at the basecamp of the Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona.  The reflectors, each with a 500-pixel camera constructed from photomultiplier tubes, image the flash of light produced in the atmosphere when a high-energy gamma ray interacts, a
technique pioneered at the Whipple Observatory using a single 10-m aperture
telescope built 30 years ago.  High-energy gamma rays result from some of the most
powerful phenomena in the Universe, such as supernova shocks and high-energy
jets from the massive black holes at the center of active galaxies. He will discuss the experimental methods used to detect high-energy gamma rays from these sources and some the first VERITAS results, as well as some work now beginning to develop more sensitive instruments for the future.

Speaker: Professor Debra Lewis from the UCSC Mathematics Dept.

THIS WEEK’S MEETING WILL BE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2009

Control theory is the study of systems over which we have limited influence; optimal control seeks strategies that give the most bang for the buck. Professor Debra Lewis  will provide some background on optimal control and Hamiltonian systems, briefly discuss a famous control system — the falling/self-righting cat — that sparked her interest in the role of psychological costs in biomechanical control systems, and she will introduce a family of cost functions in which a moderation term enforces bounds on the instantaneous control effort: tuning the moderation parameter adjusts the optimal response from “do it ASAP, whatever it takes” to “no big deal… chill out”.

SPEAKER: Prof. Robert Johnson

NASA’s Fermi mission (known by the name GLAST prior to launch) is now in

low-Earth orbit after a June 11, 2008 launch.  Both the GBM and LAT

instruments are functioning well and accumulating data, and quite a few scientific

papers have already been submitted for publication.  Robert Johnson will review the

science and history of the Fermi mission, including the substantial UCSC

contributions, describe the instruments and their performance, and present

some of the first scientific results.

For an aricle about  photons, electron and solar technology, click here.

This week’s meeting is Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 7:00PM in ISB 231

Click here for an article about the quantum to classical transition  

This week’s meeting is Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 7:00PM in ISB 231

Fellow SPS member Melinda Soares and SPS have organized an annual Science Alive workshop, so watch us perform these great experiments here on campus before the actual event on February 7, 2009 at Gavilan College in Gilroy.

•  
  • Levitation with Sulfur Hexafluoride
  • Magnetic Levitation by a Superconductor
  • Playing with Liquid Nitrogen
  • Fun with Vacuum Jars
  • Electrifying Fun with a Van de Graaf Generator

Save the date and don’t be late.

For an article about tiny man made stars click here.

This week’s meeting will be Thursday December 4, 2008 at 5:30PM in ISB 231

As usual winter quarter is going to be over much quicker than any of us expected, so with finals right AROUND the corner SPS invites you come study with us.

And if that isn’t what your senior thesis, schrodinger’s equation, fourier series, maxwell’s equation filled brain is looking for then come on over for a study break! 

No trick questions here coffee, tea and snacks will be provided.

Everyone is welcome