Physics Buzz

By: Hannah Pell “The American Physical Society (APS) has a vision of the future of physics publishing, in 2020 or so.” So begins a 1993 Science article titled “ Publication by Electronic Mail Takes Physics by Storm .” Burton Richter, then-president of APS and former head of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), elaborated: “Any physicist, any place in the country, can turn on his computer and for free browse through the table of contents of any APS journal. [The browser] can select those things about which he wants to see an abstract, and then, after deciding what he might read, ask for the article itself and eventually pay for it like you pay your telephone bill.” What was then a vision would in fact be our reality in 2020. In the early 1990s, physicists were on the cutting edge of revolutionizing how academic papers were shared and published. Scientists were then working within a context of seismic shifts in computational technology and seeing the early foundations of th

Ximena Cid (second from left) stands with students in front of a mural on the CSUDH campus. Credit: CSUDH By Korena Di Roma Howley As a young girl growing up in Sacramento, California, Ximena Cid would sit on her roof and stare at the night sky. “I always had a love of the stars, of the universe,” she says. Today, Cid is chair of the physics department at California State University Dominguez Hills and has pivoted from a focus in space science to one in physics education research (PER). “In grad school, I became more and more fascinated with the way people learn [and how] the ways in which we present ideas impacts how people understand them,” she says. She looks at how topics in physics might be rendered to better support students, noting that teaching in the introductory sequence hasn’t changed significantly in decades. “We’re still teaching in that very standard way,” she says. “What are the ways in which we can actually improve this so that more students feel engaged with

The Case for Fahrenheit vs Celsius in terms of human comfort.  By Allison Kubo Hutchison Scientists have to know how to speak the languages of many units. Improper unit conversions have caused much heartache and suffering in the past, including the loss of a $125 million dollar Mars orbiter. In general, peer-reviewed science journals only accept units that are laid out in the International System of Units (SI). SI lays out seven base units that other derived units are based on. The base unit for temperature is Kelvin (K) which was first laid out by William Thomson also known as Lord Kelvin in On the Absolute Thermometric Scale in 1848. Thomson wanted a scale that started at “infinite cold” or absolute zero where molecules have a minimum vibrational motion which is theoretically the lowest possible temperature. The increments of Kelvin were set to be equal to the increments of Celcius (°C) a system which defined 0 °C to be the freezing point of water and 100 °C. Celsius had been l

By: Hannah Pell Graphic from shutdownSTEM.com . Recently I started rereading When Physics Became King by Iwan Rhys Morus , a historian of science at Aberystwyth University in Wales. Published in 2005, Morus traces the development of physics through the nineteenth century, as the field gradually evolved from its roots in natural philosophy and mathematics to later becoming regarded as the “ultimate key to unlocking nature’s secrets.” He does so emphasizing the critical roles that institution-building and identity- and community-formation have played in the professionalization of the field, tackling the questions: what did it used to mean to “be a physicist” or to “do physics,” and how have these meanings changed over time? I wondered about the unique lessons that examining the history and culture of physics offers us. After all, physics is about exploring behaviors and phenomena within our universe that act and exist independently from us. Morus notes that, “it is central to th

By Leah Poffenberger Everyday life is full of choices: Coffee or tea? Apples or oranges? iPhone or Android? We also have to tackle more serious questions, like who to vote for in an election. Especially for the important choices in our lives, these decisions don’t happen in a vacuum: We’re usually getting a lot of information from a lot of places, especially from people around us. But how much impact do other people’s choices have on our own? As it turns out, social networks—and the beliefs the people in those networks already hold—can have a big influence in steering what decision people within that community make. Zachary Kilpatrick, an applied mathematician and the University of Colorado, Boulder, along with collaborators at the University of Houston set out to model how individuals make choices as they gather information over time, from both their private research and members of their social network. “A lot of past work has focused on situations where people have access to

3 Groundbreaking Experiments Happening Aboard the ISS Right Now https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/christina-koch-activates-the-new-biofabrication-facility NASA astronaut Christina Koch activates the BioFabrication Facility aboard the ISS in August 2019. Credit: NASA Astronauts often leave Earth with plenty of fanfare, but spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS) also routinely carry components for on-orbit experimentation, known as payloads. These systems are integrated into ISS operations, with much of the pre-flight testing and ongoing management happening at NASA’s lesser known Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Once a payload reaches the ISS, the cutting-edge experimentation begins, and many facilities have been delivering particularly exciting data over the past few years. Below are three instruments currently aboard the ISS that are helping researchers conduct groundbreaking work in physics—and come closer to solving some of the greate

One night in late April, my husband happened to look out the window and noticed, passing over our valley in southwest Montana, a string of around 30 mysterious lights—too fast to be aircraft and apparently too numerous to be satellites. The next day, a string of emails lit up a local listserv. People who’d observed the lights were wondering what they’d seen, and readers who knew what they’d seen were quick to respond: This was Starlink , a network of satellites intended to deliver high-speed broadband Internet to areas of the globe where such connectivity is currently costly, unreliable, or inaccessible. Deployed by SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by busy tech entrepreneur and would-be Martian Elon Musk, the network will ultimately consist of thousands of satellites and, according to its website, is projected to provide worldwide coverage by 2021.    The night sky over Silverthorne, Colorado     Credit: Nathan Anderson on Unsplash The company got closer to that goal l

Imagine a world where everyone is right-handed. The world may not look different, but eventually, the question might arise: Why is no one left-handed? In the world of the molecules that make up the bodies of living things like DNA and RNA, this is a real question—and astrophysics researchers think they might have an answer. Molecules that have two different structures that are mirror images but can’t be superimposed possess chirality—or handedness. Our hands are good visual representations of chirality: When you stack your hands, back of hand to palm, it’s apparent that, while being mirror images, they can’t be superimposed as your thumbs jut out to the sides. While molecules have the option of being left- or right-handed, biomolecules such as amino acids, RNA, and DNA only occur in one form in nature. DNA, for example, is only ever a right-handed helix, sugar molecules are also right-handed, while amino acids are the lefties of the biomolecular world. These preferences each bi

The essence of the perfect slice of sourdough bread is in the air right now. It is even on your hands. The heart of the sourdough is the starter, a fermented culture of flour and water. The sour flavor of the dough comes from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) who live in relative harmony and competition with yeasts. The starter (also called “levain” or “mother”) is the source of all of the good qualities of sourdough bread: the tang, the spongy texture, and the nutritional properties. Although yeasts are commonly associated with baking and other fermentations, the forgotten heroes are the LAB who generally outnumber yeasts by 100:1 in the starter1. The initial mixture of flour and water makes an excellent home for LAB with an initial pH of 5.0-6.2 - which is more acidic than water - and rich in carbohydrates for the bacteria to consume. In these favorable conditions, lactobacillus species, such as L. sanfanciscensis, flourish and outcompete other types of bacterias. Lactobacillus are used i

Combatting the COVID-19 pandemic has become an international challenge and charge. It has highlighted the positive consequences of science operating on a global scale. It has shown how answers can be found quickly when scientists share results at unprecedented speed and research becomes increasingly open-access. It has shown that we must rely on scientists from a wide array of expertise to understand — and eventually control — this virus. We need epidemiologists, virologists, biologists, engineers, data scientists, and statisticians. We also need physicists in the mix. Here at Physics Buzz, we’ve previously explored how artificial intelligence has helped us fight pandemics. But I also wanted to know: how has physics research aided in the fight to combat this pandemic? How does physics research overlap with other sciences — including epidemiology, medicine, virology, among others — to uncover new knowledge about COVID-19? What is the role of physics in our pandemic response? A quic