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First slide, viewed on my laptop. I'm lazy. The only reason I ever do anything is that sometimes in a weak moment I agree to do something, and after that I don't have the nerve to back out. And that's how I happened to give the introductory lectures leading off the 12th Canadian [...]
Walter Burke Editor's Note: Yesterday and today, Caltech is celebrating the inauguration of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics. John Preskill made the following remarks at a dinner last night honoring the board of the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. This is an exciting night for me and all of us at Caltech. Tonight [...]
As a little girl I would play school with the neighborhood children. Ever since fourth grade I knew I wanted to be a teacher in a classroom full of eager-to-learn nine-year olds, but it wasn’t until my freshman year of college that my plans changed. In Geology for Elementary Teachers, I remember thinking, “This material [...]
Faculty, Topological Quantum Physics
Quantum correlations are monogamous. Bob can be highly entangled with Alice or with Carrie, but not both. Back in the early 1990s, I was very interested in the quantum physics of black holes and devoted much of my research effort to thinking about how black holes process quantum information. That [...]
Damn, it sure takes a long time for light to travel to the Pegasus galaxy. If only quantum teleportation enabled FTL Stargates… I was hoping to post this earlier, but a heavy dose of writer’s block set in (I met a girl, and no, this blog didn’t help — but [...]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktWhH6m_DM?vq=hd720&rel=0&showinfo=0] by Jorge Cham What does it mean for something to be Quantum? I have to confess, I don't know. My Ph.D was in Robotics and Kinematics, so my neurons are deeply trained to think in terms of classical dynamics. I asked my siblings (two engineers and one architect) what comes to mind for them [...]
Sooner or later, most scientists are asked to deliver a public lecture about their research specialties. When successful, lecturing about science to the lay public can give one a feeling of deep satisfaction. But preparing the lecture is a lot of work! Caltech sponsors the Earnest C. Watson lecture series (named after the same Earnest [...]
K-12 Programs IQIM interacts broadly with K-12 students and we also include teachers. Over 1,000 students participate in programs held on the Caltech campus including Project Scientist Academy, Southern California State Science Olympiad, and InnoWorks Academy. IQIM hosts high school teachers for a Summer Research Institute; a six-week immersion in the laboratory experience working directly with [...]
A dark-haired man leans over a marble balustrade. In the ballroom below, his assistants tinker with animatronic elephants that trumpet and with potions for improving black-and-white photographs. The man is an inventor near the turn of the 20th century. Cape swirling about him, he watches technology wed fantasy. Welcome to the steampunk genre. A stew [...]