Physics Slam
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Organizer: Prof. Steven Blusk, Contact: Yudaisy Salomón Sargentón, 315-443-5960
This colloquium will be devoted to presentations specifically aimed at the undergraduate level. There will be 4 speakers, with the titles presented below:
Probing Fundamental Physics with the Early Universe by Will Kinney
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Contact: Yudaisy Salomón Sargentón, 315-443-5960
The current revolution in high-precision cosmology is revealing amazing detail about the structure and evolution of the universe, and provides a unique laboratory to study questions in fundamental physics inaccessible to traditional particle physics methods using colliders such as LHC. For example, the physics responsible for cosmological inflation is likely to operate at an energy scale comparable to that of Grand Unification. Since inflation leaves behind observable relics, in particular primordial cosmological perturbations, the inflationary universe provides us with a "microscope'' of tremendous power. In the last decade, it has been realized that inflation may even enable us to probe physics at the very highest energies, where quantum gravity becomes important. The first observational signatures of string theory (or some other theory of quantum gravity) may well come from cosmology. In this colloquium, I introduce inflation as a probe of fundamental physics, and discuss current status and future prospects.
TBD by Peter Love
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Host: Prof. Britton Plourde/ Contact: Yudaisy Salomón Sargentón, 315-443-5960
Eye patches: the evolution of novel soft matter by Alison Sweeney
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Host: Prof. Edward Lipson / Contact: Yudaisy Salomón Sargentón, 315-443-5960
Life on Earth constitutes the most sophisticated iterations in the known universe of what physicists classify as soft matter. Research in my group focuses on learning the physical rules of soft matter self-assembly phenomena via the evolutionary processes by which they arose over Earth’s history. In this view of life as soft matter, evolution, with its own formal rules and algorithms, governs the appearance and diversification of novel forms of soft matter. The field of soft matter was until very recently restricted to analytical consideration of simpler systems like isotropically interacting colloids and cross-linked polymers such as rubber. Our approach allows us to understand soft materials in a nuanced manner that would be inaccessible from more top-down analytical approaches. In this talk, I will present the most detailed test case of this perspective to date: the evolutionary appearance of spherical, gradient-index lenses in squids. This complex optical material, first described in theory by Maxwell in 1854, emerges from 5-nm spheroidal proteins via patchy colloidal physics. The lens requires stable, transparent materials throughout the span of packing fractions (from near zero to near one); accordingly, the lens proteins exploit the entire patchy colloidal phase space, and our work is the first demonstration of many of these colloidal organizations in nature. The self-assembling squid proteins exhibit structural features that have also been predicted by self-assembly theories but not yet realized in experiments, such that the evolved system may provide helpful insight to engineers designing systems at similar lengthscales. Conceptually related projects such as the structure and function of quasi-ordered optics for camouflage of midwater squid eyes will also be discussed.
TBD by Carl Rosenzweig
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Contact: Yudaisy Salomon Sargenton, 315-443-5960
TBD by Kari Dalnoki-Veress
202 Physics Bldg
Host: Prof. Joseph Paulsen/ Contact: Yudaisy Salomón Sargentón, 315-443-5960
TBD by Mike Williams
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Contact: Yudaisy Salomon Sargenton, 315-443-5960
TBD by Chanda Weinstein
Room: 202/204 Physics Bldg.
Contact: Yudaisy Salomon Sargenton, 315-443-5960