July 18, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Part 2 of the Abstract
Tonight we shall continue with Anderson’s
paper titled “More is different – Broken symmetry and the nature of the
hierarchical structure of science”
Do not worry; the abstract that I have
taken will not be as long as it was in case of the notes of Ada Lovelace or the
memoir of Luigi Menabrea and will be done with tonight.
“When we see such a spectrum, even not so
separated, and somewhat imperfect, we recognize that the nucleus is, after all,
not macroscopic; it is merely approaching macroscopic behavior.
Starting with the fundamental laws and a
computer, we would have to do two impossible things – solve a problem with
infinitely many bodies, and then apply the result to a finite system – before
we synthesized this behavior.
A third insight is that the state of a
really big system does not at all have to have the symmetry of the laws which
govern it; in fact, it usually has less symmetry.
The outstanding of this is the crystal:
Built from a substrate of atoms and space according to laws which express the
perfect homogeneity of space, the crystal suddenly and unexpectedly displays an
entirely new and very beautiful symmetry.
The general rule, however, even in the case
of the crystal, is that the large system is less symmetrical than the
underlying structure would suggest: Symmetrical as it is, a crystal is less
symmetrical then perfect homogeneity.”
P. W. Anderson is largely an unknown person
and is most likely known only to physicists who are working in his area of
specialization.
It is also unlikely that even the computer
scientists are aware of either him or his work in any direct manner but on
whose (and thereby our lives) his work had had a direct impact.
P. W. Anderson is the recipient of the 1977
Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the electronic structure of magnetic and
disordered systems.
This does not seem to be of any useful
study but surprisingly it turned out to be very useful in the development of
electronic switching and memory devices in computers.
This was the outcome of his 35 years of
work at the famous Bell Labs from 1949 to 1984 where one of the ideas proposed
by him was that of symmetry breaking within particle physics.
If you recall my past bedtime stories, you
would know that the old Bell Labs Holmdel Complex at New Jersey (now closed and
bought over since 2007) was also the place where Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation working with that strange
looking horn-shaped antenna.
Just as an aside, Bell Labs also happened
to be the place where John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley in
1947 invented the first practically implementable transistor.
The device came out of a germane experiment
wherein they observed that when two gold point contacts where applied to a
crystal of germanium (atomic number 32 and formed inside the pulsating giant
red stars by the process of stellar nucleosynthesis), a signal was produced
such that that the output power was greater than its input.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment