John Belcher, Professor & Class of 1960 Faculty Fellow, Department of Phys
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
IAP 2013 Physics lecture Series
Sponsor(s): Physics
Contact: Denise Wahkor, 4-315, 617 253-4855, DENISEW@MIT.EDU
| Jan/07 | Mon | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Voyager 1 Is In Interstellar Space!"
Voyager 1 and 2 have already crossed the heliopause, the outer limit of the Sun's magnetic field.RECENTLY VOYAGER I HAS CROSSED INTO THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM, the medium from which the Sun condensed. We will discuss those observations.
John Belcher - Professor & Class of 1960 Faculty Fellow, Department of Phys
| Jan/09 | Wed | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
The interview is a key component for most job searches. This includes summer internships, postdoctoral fellowships, and faculty searches. This talk will help show you the steps you can take to prepare for the process, and how to handle tough questions during the interview itself. This talk is open for undergraduates, graduates, post-docs, staff and anyone else who wants to improve their interviewing skills.
Matt Cubstead - Administrative Officer
| Jan/11 | Fri | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Shining Some Light on the Search for Dark Matter".
Astrophysical evidence for the existence of Dark Matter abounds, while a confirmed laboratory 'direct' detection still eludes experimentalists. An overview of the current state of the dark matter field will be given, focusing upon the contradictory experimental results of allowed signal regions and excluding upper limits.
Dr. Kimberly Palladino - Postdoctoral Fellow
| Jan/14 | Mon | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
The search for new phases of matter has been a driving force behind condensed matter research. Among the myriad of electronic phases in solids, topological states of matter exhibit universal and quantized properties that arise from the symmetry and topology of quantum many-body wavefunctions.
Liang Fu - Professor, Department of Physics
| Jan/16 | Wed | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Energy Critical Elements: More precious than gold".
I will then turn to our recent report on ¿Energy Critical Elements: Securing Materials for Emerging Technologies¿, describing rare elements¿ roles in emerging technologies, constraints on availability, and government actions to avoid disruptive shortages.
Robert Jaffe - Morningstar Professor of Science, Department of Physics
| Jan/18 | Fri | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Seeing Electron Energy Levels by Quantum Tunneling"
This talk describes results from a technique that averages responses to millions of short pulses to measure electron energy levels or "spectra". The spectra revealing striking and previously hidden features of the behavior of electrons that are restricted to move in two-dimensions.
Raymond Ashoori - Professor, Department of Physics
| Jan/22 | Tue | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Quantum Fields that went Bump in the Night: Cosmic Inflation and the Latest Observations".
Our universe likely underwent an enormous expansion, or ¿inflation,¿ fractions of a second after the big bang. Inflation would have stretched tiny quantum fluctuations to cosmic scales, imprinting subtle patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation.
David Kaiser - Director and Professor, STS & Sr Lecturer, Physics, Program
| Jan/23 | Wed | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Phase Transition: From Science to Quantitative Trading."
What do quants do in finance? What does it take to be successful on Wall Street? How did quantitative field evolve over the last twenty or so years and what might the future bring? I will use my own path from Physics to finance to illustrate which of the skills scientists possess might be applicable.
Vlad Portnoy - MIT Alumni
| Jan/25 | Fri | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "What Do Students Do, Learn From, and Want to Learn"?
What knowledge are students learning? What instructional activities are they learning it from? What student habits are helpful or detrimental to learning? What learning do they remember at graduation? We must be able to answer these questions to have an informed discussion about our educational process.
David Pritchard - Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics, Department of Phys
| Jan/28 | Mon | 11:00AM-01:00PM | Whitehead Auditorium |
Title: "Anticipating sudden transitions in biological populations: Cooperation, cheating, and collapse".
Natural populations can suffer catastrophic collapse in response to small changes in environmental conditions. We confirm this possibility experimentally and explore how such social parasitism can lead to population extinction.
Jeff Gore - Professor, Department of Physics
| Jan/30 | Wed | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "To flex or to focus, that is the question"
We'll explore the Physics Focussed and Flexible major options. Come learn everything you ever wanted to know about the Physics Flexible major and options for designing a Physics degree that best fits the interests and aspirations of each student.
John Belcher - Professor & Class of 1960 Faculty Fellow, Department of Phys, Nergis Mavalvala - Curtis (1963) and Kathleen Marble Professor
| Feb/01 | Fri | 01:30PM-02:30PM | 6-120 |
Title: "Photon-photon interactions".
Photons are ideal carriers of quantum states but the stored information is difficult to process because photons in vacuum do not interact with one another. I present some recent experimental results on inducing interactions between individual photons, including an all-optical transistor that operates with a single control photon.
Vladan Vuletic - Professor, Department of Physics