Let’s say you have some liquid that you want to contain without leaks, say, milk for a baby. What do you do? Well, you put it in something like a baby bottle, the components of which are shown here: You have a hard plastic bottle, a soft silicone nipple, and a hard plastic ring that… Continue reading A Stainless Steel Baby Bottle
Category: Experiment
Still in the Dark
As a physicist with a blog, I am contractually obligated to do a post on the CDMS almost-a-result. This is that post. The short version: they expected at most 0.8 events (that’s total events, not events per day, or anything– this is a whole community built on detecting nothing at all), and got 2, with… Continue reading Still in the Dark
Making Cold Atoms Look Like Electrons
One of the things I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post about why I like AMO physics is that AMO systems have proven to be outstanding tools for solving problems from other fields of physics. In particular, ultra-cold atoms have proven to be a fantastic venue for studying problems from condensed matter physics. There’s a… Continue reading Making Cold Atoms Look Like Electrons
DonorsChoose Payoff: Why AMO Physics?
Months ago, during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I offered to answer questions from people who donated to the Challenge. I then promptly forgot to respond to the questions sent in. Mea maxima culpa. Here’s a way-too-late response to a good question from “tcmJOE”: I’ve spent the past few years trying to explore physics and figure out… Continue reading DonorsChoose Payoff: Why AMO Physics?
Using Molecules to Search for New Physics
I’ve made a couple of oblique references to this over the past couple of months, but I have an article in the new issue of Physics World, on experiments using molecules to search for an electric dipole moment of the electron: When most of us think about searching for physics beyond the Standard Model –… Continue reading Using Molecules to Search for New Physics
Poll: The Computers of the Future
Today’s Quantum Optics lecture is about quantum computing experiments, and how different types of systems stack up. Quantum computing, as you probably know if you’re reading this blog, is based on building a computer whose “bits” can not only take on “0” and “1” states, but arbitrary superpositions of “0” and “1”. Such a computer… Continue reading Poll: The Computers of the Future
What Keeps Me Up at Night
One of my pet peeves about physics as perceived by the public and presented in the media is the way that everyone assumes that all physicists are theoretical particle physicists. Matt Springer points out another example of this, in this New Scientist article about the opening panel at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival. The panel… Continue reading What Keeps Me Up at Night
A Brief History of Timekeeping
I gave a guest lecture this morning in a colleague’s sophomore seminar class about time. She’s having them look at time from a variety of perspectives, and they just finished reading Longitude, so she asked me to talk about the physics of clocks and the measurement of time. I’ve long considered using “A Brief History… Continue reading A Brief History of Timekeeping
Nobel for High-Speed Internet and Digital Cameras
The sneaky folks at the Nobel Foundation have thrown a spanner in the works when it comes to the Physics prize. All the speculation has surrounded exotic quantum effects and theoretical esoterica, and they turn around and give it to something –gasp– practical… The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics is split three ways: half to… Continue reading Nobel for High-Speed Internet and Digital Cameras
The Early Days of Quantum Engineering
Buried in the weekend links dump at the arxiv blog was Scalable ion traps for quantum information processing: We report on the design, fabrication, and preliminary testing of a 150 zone array built in a `surface-electrode’ geometry microfabricated on a single substrate. We demonstrate transport of atomic ions between legs of a `Y’-type junction and… Continue reading The Early Days of Quantum Engineering