The Society of Physics Students at UC Santa Cruz

Are you thinking about grad school after graduation? Are you in the process of applying right now? Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?

This Thursday’s SPS meeting — which takes place on Thursday, November 1st, 2007, at 6 PM in ISB 231 — features a special panel of physics and astrophysics grad students talking about grad school, and promises to answer many of your questions and remedy much of your confusion about all Graduate School Issues: the application process, letters of recommendation, the Physics GRE, fellowships, qualifying exams, etc.

And even if you think you’re mastering the application process, there’s probably something you’ve overlooked. Our panel can help.

And we will also be electing new officers! The nominees are as follows:

And as a preview, the meetings of November 8th and 15th will be host to the first annual SPS Undergraduate Symposium. Each meeting will feature four of your fellow undergrads giving fifteen minute presentations about some kind of research they’ve been doing, complete with a conference-style question period and a faculty moderator. More info later.

And an article concerning new info about the origin of cosmic rays is here:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/accelerated_rays.html

– James

Have you ever had a conversation with a non-physicist about quantum mechanics?

If you have, it was possibly a very frustrating experience. There is a lot of mis- or under-information out there about quantum mechanics, from imprecise books and articles to ridiculous films (e.g., “What the Bleep Do We Know?”) that abuse QM for dubious purposes.

Misinformation is a bad thing.

We are pleased to welcome Prof. Bruce Rosenblum at this week’s SPS meeting, which takes place on Thursday, October 25th, 2007, at 6 PM in ISB 231. Prof. Rosenblum recognizes that misinformation is bad, and has written a book (with fellow UCSC Physics faculty member Fred Kuttner) called “The Quantum Enigma” that addresses these issues. In his words:

In teaching quantum mechanics (e.g., 139 A, B), instructors (including me) appropriately avoid the quantum mysteries. We stick to the Copenhagen interpretation (which has been called, “Shut up and calculate!”). But, today, first-rank experts in the fundamentals of quantum mechanics increasingly address the strange nature of physical reality and the “spooky” EPR-Bell entanglements. I will present the reality-enigma quantum mechanics confronts us with and a simple, non-mathematical, proof of Bell’s theorem. Admitting the mystery and facing it head-on is the best way to counter the current quantum pseudoscience.

Coffee, tea, soda, and some food will be available, as usual, although a pseudoscientific characterization of the shortbread cookies will be up to you. We want no part of it.

And for futher reading, Alain Aspect’s 1999 take on Bell’s inequality is here (PDF):

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

– James

Due to some scheduling issues, this week’s SPS meeting — which takes place on Thursday, October 18th, 2007, at 6 PM in ISB 231 — will be a nice, relaxing study session. Come and drink coffee and eat snacks and work on free body diagrams or minimizing action integrals or manipulating metric tensors or some other hopelessly complicated calculation with your fellow physics students. You can even bring a study group and stay until they kick us out of the room, if you feel like it.

We’ll also briefly discuss next week’s officer elections.

And as a preview, next week’s meeting will also feature Professor Bruce Rosenblum giving a presentation on the seemingly strange predictions and implications of quantum mechanics. More info later.

Here is an article about thermal logic gates is here:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0032

– James

What is the Higgs boson? What is mass? These are two rather weird questions, but they’re very good questions, because Higgs field research is a major concern of particle physics these days. The two questions are intimately related, it turns out. But how?

You may have read an article or two about the Higgs boson, or overheard someone talk about it, but you probably haven’t listened to a working particle experimentalist give a presentation about it.

So here’s your chance.

Professor Jason Nielsen *is* a working particle experimentalist who has experience at CERN and Fermilab and is now an integral part of the Physics Department and the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, and at this week’s meeting — which takes place on

Thursday, October 11th, 2007, at 6 PM in ISB 231 — he’ll be talking about the Higgs: What it is, why it’s necessary, and when it’s likely to be detected. He’ll even be discussing some of the most recent results from the search for the Higgs.

Coffee, tea, soda, and a little food will be present at the meeting, too, and will be far less elusive than the Higgs.

And an article about Grunberg and Fert, this week’s Nobel Prize winners, is here:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/31421

– James

Welcome back from the summer! The Society of Physics Students at UCSC missed you, wherever you were and whoever you are. You might be a junior or sophomore recovering from summer school. You might be a returning senior who did summer research, either here or abroad. You might be an incoming first-year physics major or a new transfer student. *Whatever* your situation, the SPS@UCSC welcomes you back.

And we hope you haven’t forgotten what angular momentum is.

But if you *have* forgotten, you need to get back into the harmonic oscillator swing of things, quickly! To that end, you are cordially invited to the FIRST SPS MEETING OF THE YEAR! It will be held this Thursday, October 4th, at 6 PM, in ISB 231.

And there will be pizza.

Our regular weekly meeting time this quarter is going to be Thursday at 6, and most of the meetings will feature a faculty member or another speaker talking about his or her research at an undergraduate level.

This week, though, we’re having a Pizza-and-Info meeting, because we have a couple of VERY IMPORTANT THINGS to discuss:

1) New officers! We will be holding elections for new officers in about two weeks, at the October 18th meeting. You can nominate yourself, or you can nominate someone else who’s too shy to self-nominate. An official SPS position is a very nice thing to put on a resume or CV, so if you want to be involved, speak up!
If you *are* interested in an officer position, it is *highly recommended* that you were active in the SPS last year, but it’s not necessary. If you feel you have what it takes to maintain (or exceed!) the level of activity, community and sheer physics brilliance represented on our (soon to be updated) website…
http://physics.ucsc.edu/sps/ (come on, your seeing it right now! –Rion)
…then, by all means, get involved! More on Thursday.

2) Until the new officers are installed, last year’s officers are still in charge and are already planning a bunch of stuff for this year: Extraordinary field trips, Tesla coil demonstrations, special panel discussions, etc. Come to the Pizza-and-Info meeting for more info. And pizza.

As always, pizza or not, we will have coffee, tea, and soda on hand.

And an article about a slight variation on the regnant cold dark matter picture of the early universe — “warm” dark matter — is here:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/31133

Once again, welcome back from the summer, and I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

– James