Journal Club Workshop, PHY250

A. Alan Middleton, Spring 2006

Syllabus
Calendar
Sample essay

First reading (due Jan. 24)

Reading assignment description.
Link to research center in Germany.
Link to notes from an astro course.
Link to original reading - this is a technical paper; look up information in reading assignment description.
Besides links under reading assignment, here is another discussion.

Second reading (for Jan. 31) - gravitational wave observatories

Reading assignment details
The reading is available at SU BlackBoard.
An introduction to LIGO.

Third reading (for Feb. 7) - introduction to Big Bang and Cosmology

PRIMARY READING: "The Evolution of the Universe", Peebles, Schramm, Turner and Kron, Scientific American, Oct. 1994, pp. 52-57.
SECONDARY READING: "Making Sense of Modern Cosmology", P. James E. Peebles, Scientific American, January 2001, pp. 54-55. "The Cosmic Symphony", Wayne Hu and Martin White, Scientific American, Feb. 2004, pp. 44-53.
EXTREMELY USEFUL WEB SITE: WMAP at NASA, look under "Universe" and "Outreach" especially. introduction to LIGO.

Third reading (for Feb. 14) - Dark Energy (moderated by Prof. Mark Trodden)

"Very Dark Energy", Karen Wright, Discover, March 2001, pp. 71-76.
"From Slowdown to Speedup", Adam G. Riess and Michael S. Turner, Scientific American, Feb. 2004.
WEB SITES: one of many.

Fourth reading (for Feb. 21) - Large Hadron Collider, Particle Physics (moderated by Prof. Marina Artuso)

"The Large Hadron Collider", Chris Llewellyn Smith, Scientific American, March 2000, pp. 70--77. 38-40.
"Physics Tries to Leave the Tunnel", Charles Seife, Science, 3 October 2003, vol. 302, pp. 36--38.
[OPTIONAL/BACKGROUND/SKIM]"The Dawn of Physics Beyond the Standard Model", Gordon Kane, Scientific American, June 2003, pp. 68--75.
[OPTIONAL] "High Energy Physics: Exit America?", Charles Seife, Science, 1 April 2005, vol. 308, pp.

Fifth reading (for Feb. 28) - Nanotechnology

Readings from the September 2001 Special Issue of Scientific American on Nanotech.
- "Little Big Science", Gary Stix, pp. 32--37.
- "Plenty of Room Indeed", Michael Roukes, pp. 48--57.
- [OPTIONAL] "The Art of Building Small", George Whitesides and J. Christopher Love, pp. 39--47.
WEB SITES:

Sixth reading (for Mar. 7) - Energy & Lighting

"In Pursuit of the Ultimate Lamp", Crafor, Holonyak, Kish, Scientific American, February 2001, pp. 62--67.
"Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability: Energy for a Greenhouse Planet", Science, Vol. 298, 1 November 2002, pp. 981--987.

Seventh reading (for Mar. 21) - Quantum Communications

"A Quantum Leap into the Future", Ch. 8 of The Code Book by Simon Singh.

Eighth reading (for Mar. 28) - Careers and statistics

Please read a recent AIP salary report a recent report on what people do after graduation, besides going to grad school, and a report on women in physics.
Also look at the first few pages of an AIP employment report.
For your information, please be aware of such sites as Profiles on physicists in industry: http://www.tipmagazine.com/profiles.html, resources for astro & physics students http://www.compadre.org/student, General advice on physics and careers.

Ninth reading for Tuesday, April 4 - Candy and Sand

Press release from Princeton University (see printout).
"Improving the Density of Jammed Disordered Packings Using Ellipsoids", Donev, et al, Science Vol. 303, pp. 990-993 (2004).
Also see photos at the Chaikin lab.
Please comment on photos and discussion at the Behringer lab.

Tenth reading for Tuesday, April 11 - Neutrinos

The topic for next week is neutrinos.

On Thursday, April 6, there is a colloquium on detecting cosmic neutrinos in the Department of Physics. IF you attend the colloquium, I will not require an essay to confirm that you have done the reading. The talk is at 4 PM, in the room that we usually meet. Snacks are available at 3:45.

Otherwise, please either

1) write an essay on what you can find out on Super-Kamiokande and the detection of neutrions from Supernova 1987a. How was this coordinated with light observations?

2) write an essay on the MINOS experiment (new results there in just the past week on neutrinos from Fermilab)

3) write an essay on the AMANDA/IceCube project. Research information for this on the Web.

Eleventh reading for Tuesday, April 18 - Lightning

"A Bolt Out of the Blue", by J. Dwyer, in Scientific American, May 2005 issue. [See originals in Library, for example; instructions also in e-mail.]
For more technical information [not required reading], see May 2005 Physics Today for an article on lightning.

Thirteenth reading for Tuesday, May 2

Skim "What Don't We Know?" from Science, 1 July 2005. Read in details the pages titled "Do Deeper Principles Underlie Quantum Uncertainty and Nonlocality?", "How Far Can We Push Chemical Self-Assembly?" and "Are We Alone in the Universe?" and be prepared to discuss them.

The goal will be to discuss what makes a scientific question "interesting" or "important".