Listen now! Mustang Physics, May 2011

From left to right: Frank Wilczek, Steve Sekula and Holly Howard

Hosts: Professor Stephen Sekula and SMU undergraduate Holly Howard.

Frank Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom in the strong interaction, one of the four known fundamental forces of Nature. Professor Wilczek delivered this year’s Lightner-Sams Lecture at SMU, an event made possible by the generous support of the Lightner-Sams Foundation.

SHOW NOTES

• Information from the show
  • The MIT homepage of Professor Frank Wilczek
  • Website for Prof. Wilczek’s most recent book, The Lightness of Being
  • Announcement for the Lightner-Sams Lecture at SMU
• Send us an audio postcard!
  • We at Mustang Physics would like to hear from SMU physics alumni, friends of the department, or listeners with an interest in the frontiers of physics. Record 2-3 minutes of audio (introduce yourself and speak about how you are connected to the ideas or methods of physics). To arrange delivery of the audio, please contact Prof. Stephen Sekula (my contact information is available from http://www.physics.smu.edu/web/people/).
• Credits:
  • Produced by Kathleen Tibbetts
  • Theme music written by Jason South and performed by Jason South and Stephen Sekula.

Listen now! Mustang Physics, April 2011

From left to right: Steve Sekula and Matt Bellis

Professor Stephen Sekula 

Matt Bellis (Stanford University)
(Photo by Florencia Prada)

Host: Professor Stephen Sekula

Matt Bellis is a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University. He works on the BaBar Experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He presented the SMU Physics Department Seminar on March 7, 2011, where he discussed his work on the search for fundamental symmetry violations that might explain our asymmetric cosmos. He spoke with me about his effort to use particle physics data to produce music. This effort would allow whole new communities to experience and use particle physics data.

SHOW NOTES

• Information from the show
  • Recent paper: “Searches for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B⁰ → Λ_c⁺ l^-, B^- → Λ l^-, and B^- → anti-Λ l^-” (http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3830)
  • Matt’s Website
  • Science Hack Day SF
  • LHC Sound
  • The Processing Programming Language
• Send us an audio postcard!
  • We at Mustang Physics would like to hear from SMU physics alumni, friends of the department, or listeners with an interest in the frontiers of physics. Record 2-3 minutes of audio (introduce yourself and speak about how you are connected to the ideas or methods of physics). To arrange delivery of the audio, please contact Prof. Stephen Sekula (my contact information is available from http://www.physics.smu.edu/web/people/).
• Credits:
  • Produced by Kathleen Tibbetts
  • Theme music written by Jason South and performed by Jason South and Stephen Sekula.

On this episode of “Mustang Physics,” we resume our conversation with special guest Prof. Michael Schatz (Georgia Institute of Technology), who spoke with us about physics education and efforts to alter the way physics is taught. “Mustang Physics” is your gateway into the world of physics and the lives and thoughts of physicists.

Professor Stephen Sekula 

SMU Undergraduate Matthew Rispoli
(Photo courtesy of Matthew Rispoli)

Prof. Michael Schatz (Georgia Institute of Technology)
(Photo courtesy of Michael Schatz)

Hosts: Professor Stephen Sekula and SMU undergraduate Matthew Rispoli.

Listen now! Mustang Physics, February 2011

Prof. Michael Schatz is a Professor of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spoke with us on December 7, 2010, about the importance of an education in physics and efforts at Georgia Tech to change the way physics is taught at the introductory level. In this second part of a two-part series, we discuss student fears in the physics classroom and Prof. Schatz’s research and interests outside of physics education.

SHOW NOTES

• Send us an audio postcard!
  • We at Mustang Physics would like to hear from SMU physics alumni, friends of the department, or listeners with an interest in the frontiers of physics. Record 2-3 minutes of audio (introduce yourself and speak about how you are connected to the ideas or methods of physics). To arrange delivery of the audio, please contact Prof. Stephen Sekula (my contact information is available from http://www.physics.smu.edu/web/people/).
• The Georgia Tech Physics Education Research Group
• Michael Schatz’s website: http://phweb.physics.gatech.edu/schatz/
• Credits:
  • Produced by Kathleen Tibbetts
  • Theme music written by Jason South and performed by Jason South and Stephen Sekula.

Professor Stephen Sekula 

SMU Undergraduate Matthew Rispoli
(Photo courtesy of Matthew Rispoli)

Prof. Michael Schatz (Georgia Institute of Technology)
(Photo courtesy of Michael Schatz)

Hosts: Professor Stephen Sekula and SMU undergraduate Matthew Rispoli.

Listen now! Mustang Physics, January 2011

Prof. Michael Schatz is a Professor of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spoke with us on December 7, 2010, about the importance of an education in physics and efforts at Georgia Tech to change the way physics is taught at the introductory level. In this first part of a two-part series, we discuss the challenges of this new approach and the novel experiences that are given to students in the introductory physics courses at Georgia Tech.

From left to right: Matthew Rispoli, Steve Sekula, and Michael Schatz

SHOW NOTES

• The Georgia Tech Physics Education Research Group
• Michael Schatz’s website: http://phweb.physics.gatech.edu/schatz/
• Credits:
  • Produced by Kathleen Tibbetts
  • Theme music written by Jason South and performed by Jason South and Stephen Sekula.

Listen now! Mustang Physics, December 2010

We discuss Vladimir’s interest in the interface of psychology and computer science and welcome our special guests, Dr. Aidan Randle-Conde (Southern Methodist University) and Dr. Paul “Jack” Jackson (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). We talk about international science, being a scientist on big experiments, going beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and a love of travel and music.

Professor Stephen Sekula 

SMU Undergraduate Vladimir Jovanovic

Dr. Aidan Randle-Conde (Southern Methodist University)
(Photo courtesy of Aidan Randle-Conde)

Dr. Paul Jackson (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
(Photo courtesy of Paul Jackson)

Dr. Aidan Randle-Conde is a post-doctoral researcher at Southern Methodist University, based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and conducting research on the ATLAS Experiment. Dr. Paul “Jack” Jackson is a post-doctoral researcher at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who is also based at CERN and conducts research on ATLAS. We spoke with AIdan and Jack in the CERN Cafeteria, social and intellectual hub of this great international laboratory, in August, 2010. They were candid about their journey from England, to North America for school and research, and their work now on the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. We also talked about their passions outside of research, including wanderlust and songwriting.

SHOW NOTES

• Steve, Aidan and Jack all worked together on the BaBar Experiment and now work together on the ATLAS Experiment. Learn more about those here:
  • The BaBar Experiment
  • The ATLAS Experiment
• Vladimir’s Corner
  • “Sensory Extension”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution
  • “Tongue Camera”: http://science.howstuffworks.com/brainport.htm
  • “Waist Compass”: Journal article on the vibrational compass
  • Prof. Robert Kehoe’s variable star research: http://www.physics.smu.edu/ugradResearch/#astro_phy
  • The Innovation Competition at the SMU Lyle School of Engineering: http://lyle.smu.edu/innovationcompetition/index.html
• What is a “milli-Hubble-barn?” It’s one-thousandth of a Hubble-barn! OK, what’s a “Hubble-barn?” It’s a unit of volume – the product of the Hubble length, c/H (the speed of light divided by Hubble’s constant) and a barn (10^-28 meters-squared). This is the volume of a straw whose length is that of the universe and whose cross-sectional area is that of an atomic nucleus. 36 milli-Hubble-barns is about 1 pint.
• Credits:
  • Produced by Kathleen Tibbetts
  • Theme music written by Jason South and performed by Jason South and Stephen Sekula.

Listen now! Mustang Physics, November 2010

We discuss Jason’s work with the top quark, and welcome our special guest Professor Marusa Bradac (University of California-Davis) for a discussion of dark matter, the unseen 85% of the matter in the universe.

Professor Stephen Sekula

SMU Undergraduate Jason South 

Professor Marusa Bradac (University of California-Davis)
(Photo courtesy of Marusa Bradac)

Marusa is a Professor of Physics at the University of California-Davis. She presented the Lightner Colloquium in the SMU Department of Physics in the Spring of 2010, where she spoke about her work using the gravity from thousands of galaxies (“galaxy clusters”) to detect the presence of unseen dark matter. We sat down with her and discussed her research, its future directions, and her life outside of her research.

SHOW NOTES

• Marusa Bradac’s professional homepage: http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~marusa/
  • Her page featuring the Bullet Cluster composite image: http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~marusa/Work.html
• Publications related to the Bullet Cluster and dark matter
  • Douglas Clowe, Marusa Bradac, Anthony H. Gonzalez, Maxim Markevitch, Scott W. Randall, Christine Jones, and Dennis Zaritsky. A Direct Empirical Proof of the Existence of Dark Matter. Astrophys.J. 648:109-113, 2006.
  • M. Bradac, T. Treu, D. Applegate, A.H. Gonzalez, D. Clowe, W. Forman, C. Jones, P. Marshall, P. Schneider, D. Zaritsky. Focusing Cosmic Telescopes: Exploring Redshift z~5-6 Galaxies with the Bullet Cluster 1E0657-56. Astrophys.J.706:1201-1212, 2009.
• Other public information about lensing, the Bullet Cluster, etc.
  • “Dark Matter Observed”. SLAC Today, August 22, 2006. http://today.slac.stanford.edu/feature/darkmatter.asp
  • “The Bullet Cluster”. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster
  • “Gravitational Lens”. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
• Credits:
  • Produced by Kathleen Tibbetts
  • Theme music written by Jason South and performed by Jason South and Stephen Sekula.