Meetings | Post by kharidiron on October 31st, 2006
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Gravitation is all about bodies acting on one another. The one-body problem is no problem. The two-body problem is not that tough and is perfectly solvable. So why is the three-body problem so insanely difficult?
Professor Richard Montgomery, of the Math Department here at UCSC, has been working on this stuff for quite a while, and has some interesting results. At this week’s meeting, which is on Thursday, November 2nd at 5:30 PM in ISB 231, Prof. Montgomery says that we’ll do the following:
We will start with a tour of some of the known solutions to the gravitational N-body problem. Then I will describe new results from the last 6 years, focussing on the geometric pictures and methods underlying these results. Time permitting, I will describe some of the major open problems remaining in the planar 3-body problem.
And on Prof. Montgomery’s website, I noticed the phrases “differential geometry” and “calculus of variations”. That second one rings a huge bell, for some reason.
Coffee, soda, tea, food, etc.
Everyone is welcome, especially your math major friends. Tell them about the cookies. Oh, and about the speaker.
–James
Meetings | Post by kharidiron on October 25th, 2006
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This may come as a colossal shock to you, but all physics majors do not go on to become strictly physics professors! Insane, I know.
As evidence, please note that the speaker at this week’s meeting, which will take place on Thursday, October 24th at 5:30 PM in ISB 231, is Professor Andrew Moore, of the UCSC Ocean Sciences department.
Professor Moore will be presenting a talk titled, appropriately enough, “Physical Oceanography: What’s It All About?” You may very well emerge from his presentation with the distinct impression that there is more to physics than manipulating Bessel functions.
Coffee, tea, and eating stuff will be present, too, but to get to it, you might have to step over me, the one manipulating Bessel functions to calculate the heat diffusion in the cylindrical coffee pot. Actually, the boundary conditions are probably over my head at this point.
Okay, I’ll just listen to the presentation, instead.
EVERYONE IS WELCOME!
–James
Meetings | Post by kharidiron on October 3rd, 2006
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As far as I’m concerned, quantum mechanics is three things:
1) Nontrivial to master.
2) Mind-blowingly cool.
3) Odd.
At this week’s SPS meeting, which is on Thursday at 5:30 PM in ISB 231, UCSC physics lecturer and lab lifesaver Fred Kuttner will talk about the book that he and Professor Bruce Rosenblum recently had published, Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, which addresses my #3. From the book’s website:
Trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Schr?dinger showed that it “absurdly” allowed a cat to be in a “superposition” simultaneously dead and alive. Einstein derided the theory’s “spooky interactions.” With Bell’s theorem, we now know Schr?dinger’s superpositions and Einstein’s spooky interactions indeed exist.
Rosenblum and Kuttner then go on to discuss what QM implies about consciousness and how a misunderstanding of these implications can lead to some wildly misguided nonsense.
And since this is our first major meeting of the year, we’re having pizza. BUT YOU MUST RSVP! Do so now, if you can, by emailing ucscsps@gmail.com, and letting us know you’ll be there. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to settle for saltines with ketchup and easy cheez on them. And maybe a sugar packet or something.
No, seriously! Email ucscsps@gmail.com right fracking now! Let us know you’ll want pizza!
We’ll also have the requisite coffee and soda, which should go wonderfully with the ketchup easy cheez saltines you’ll be eating BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T RSVP TO THE ABOVE EMAIL ADDRESS.
More events later. Watch this page.
–James
