Institute Diversity Summit 2011
Edmund Bertschinger, Robbin Chapman
Mon Jan 24, 09am-04:00pm, E14-6th floor
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Prereq: None
The Institute Diversity Summit 2011 is a rare opportunity to increase communication and collaboration across MIT departments and groups. We invite the entire MIT community to join us in celebrating the varied contributions of underrepresented students, postdocs, staff and faculty!
Learn about and practice ways to interact within a diverse environment, help cultivate an inclusive environment, and reach out to bring in all kinds of talent to MIT
The program will include presentations, breakout sessions, networking opportunities, exhibits, and more!
Monday, January 24th from 9am to 4pm in E14-6th floor.
Refreshments will be provided
Contact: Edmund Bertschinger, 4-304, 253-4801, edbert@mit.edu
Cosponsor: Architecture
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:a Defense Industrial Physicists: What Do They Really Do?
Tim Imholt - Raytheon
Mon Jan 10, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
There is no doubt what an academic physicist does. However there is sometimes confusion as to the true job(s) an industrial physicist may work. This is especially true of the defense industry where much of the day to day goings on is shrouded in secrecy. That shroud will be lifted as much as is practical and the real applications will be shown. These range from advanced armor design and testing to how to make a missile fly further, faster on less fuel.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:b The Sociology of Electrons: What Happens When Electrons Interact?
Karen Michaeli - Pappalardo Fellow in Physics: 2010-2013
Wed Jan 12, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
What would our lives be like without magnets? Devices like computers and telephones rely on magnetic components. Quantum mechanically, magnetism arises from interactions between many electrons.
In the last century, a plethora of fascinating phenomena emerging from interactions between electrons, have been discovered. A particularly interesting example is superconductivity. Here, electrons that usually repel each other bind into pairs. The paired electrons form a new phase where electric current flows with zero resistance. Besides pairing, electrons in a strong magnetic field can also split into multiple new particles. This is known as the fractional quantum Hall effect, which has attracted much attention as a promising route to building a quantum computer.
Karen Michaeli will present these interesting phases of matter and explain the physics behind them.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:c From High Energy Physics to High Finance
Thomas A. Frank - Executive Vice President of Interactive Brokers Group, Inc
Fri Jan 14, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Dr. Thomas A. Frank is Executive Vice President; Chief Information Officer of Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. Frank joined in 1985 and has served since July 1999 as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Interactive Brokers LLC. In addition, Dr. Frank has served as Vice President of Timber Hill LLC since December 1990. Dr. Frank received an undergraduate physics degree in '77 and Ph.D. in physics in 1985 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thomas Frank was ranked on the top 10 CIOs on Wall Street. Interactive Brokers Group: Technology has enabled Interactive Brokers to go where other brokers—usually hindered by some form of manual intervention in the trade cycle—simply can’t.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:d Searching for the Higgs: A Personal View on the Prospects
Professor Christoph Paus
Tue Jan 18, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
I will review what the available data and the Standard Model itself tell us about the Higgs boson and show the present status of the Tevatron searches.
In the second part I will present prospects of the Tevatron and the latest projections from the LHC which will include some selected results to underline the good performance of the detectors.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:e How Gravity Delays, Deflects, Distorts and Bends Our View of the Astronomical Universe
Professor Paul Schechter
Wed Jan 19, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
In almost (but not quite) the same way that gravity alters the trajectories of moving objects, it also alters the trajectories of light rays. Gravity refracts light in the same way that glass does.
When light traveling toward the Earth from a distant astronomical object passes close to a massive object (say a galaxy) along the way, it is delayed, deflected, distorted and bent. This phenomenon (called gravitational lensing) is entirely analogous to the phenomenon of terrestrial mirages. It can used to determine the distribution of both luminous and dark matter in the universe. The theory and practice of gravitational lensing will be described.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:f Have We Already Detected Dark Matter?
James Battat - Pappalardo Fellow in Physics: 2008-11
Thu Jan 20, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Astrophysical observations reveal that the Universe is dominated by dark matter. But dark matter particles have never been directly detected in the laboratory. Or have they? In this talk, I’ll discuss the astrophysical evidence for dark matter, describe why it is so difficult to detect dark matter in the laboratory, and then show some recent tantalizing observations that have led some physicists to claim that dark matter has been detected. Throughout my talk, I will describe MIT’s contribution to the field of dark matter identification.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:g Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds
Professor Sara Seager
Mon Jan 24, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
For thousands of years people have wondered, “Are we Alone?” With about 500 planets discovered to orbit nearby stars, the existence of exoplanets is firmly established. Astronomers are now able to routinely measure planetary sizes, masses, and atmospheres for a subset of hot, big exoplanets. The race to find habitable exoplanets is on with the realization that big Earths orbiting small stars can be both discovered and characterized with existing technology. Professor Seager will answer the four questions she gets asked most often: “What could aliens see, looking at Earth from afar?”; “When will we find another Earth?”; “Can we go there?”; “If we cannot go there, why look?”
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:h Taking A Break From Theoretical Physics By Thinking About Policy Formation
Professor S. James Gates Jr - MLK Visiting Professor in Physics for 2010-2011
Wed Jan 26, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
By April of 2009, S. James Gates Jr. found himself with a gubernatorial appointment to the Maryland State Board of Education and an appointment to the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology. In spite of this, he also still actively pursues fundamental questions in the area of `supersymmetry.' This presentation reflects on Professor Gates’ arc of history that began with two bachelor of science degrees (mathematics and physics) from MIT in 1973 to answer the query on how this all happened.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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MIT Physics Lecture Series:i String Theory Makes Forests from Trees
Professor John McGreevy
Thu Jan 27, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
In order to understand the behavior of a system with many degrees of freedom, in physics or otherwise, some selective inattention is necessary. A description of interesting, big-picture, long-wavelength phenomena requires us to average over what the microscopic, fast-moving constituents are doing.
This coarse-graining procedure is almost always hard to do in practice. In the last decade, an amazing relation between many-body systems and gravity in extra dimensions (called holographic duality) was discovered using string theory. When it can be applied, holographic duality does the coarse-graining for us.
I will conclude with a discussion of recent attempts to say something about interesting states of matter using holographic duality.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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Mechanics ReView
Prof. Dave Pritchard + Staff
Mon-Fri, Jan 10-14, 18-21, 24-28, 02-04:00pm, 26-152
Enrollment limited: advance sign up required (see contact below)
Signup by: 07-Jan-2011
Limited to 50 participants.
Participants requested to attend all sessions (non-series)
Prereq: Contact Nancy Boyce at nboyce@mit.edu by 12:00 noon 1/7/09
Mechanics ReView– Prof. Dave Pritchard
Start: Jan 10, Monday
End: Jan 28, Friday
Building on Newtonian Mechanics at the 8.01 level, we will offer a unified view of how to solve real world mechanics problems that involve several concepts at once. We will emphasize several themes: modeling reality, specifying the system and interactions, making sense of the answer, approximations/estimation, how to approach problems and decompose them into simpler pieces. We will use an online teacher-authored and student-modified WIKI on problem solving using models that gives students a hierarchical overview of the core physical content of Mechanics.
Limited enrollment – sign up by 12:00 noon Thursday Jan. 6
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
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The Feynman Films
Andy Neely
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Prereq: None
A series of films by Richard Feynman and open to the MIT community.
Contact: Nancy Boyce, 4-315, 253-4461, nboyce@mit.edu
The Law of Gravitation
Andy Neely
Mon Jan 10, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
The Best Mind Since Einstein
Andy Neely
Wed Jan 12, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
The Relation of Mathematics to Physics
Andy Neely
Fri Jan 14, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
The Great Conservation Principles
Andy Neely
Tue Jan 18, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
Symmetry in Physical Law
Andy Neely
Wed Jan 19, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
The Last Journey of a Genius
Andy Neely
Thu Jan 20, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
Take the World from Another Point of View
Andy Neely
Mon Jan 24, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
The Distinction of Past and Future
Andy Neely
Wed Jan 26, 12-01:00pm, 6-120
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