General Meeting Nov. 5th 2009
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.