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The elementary school I attended hosted an annual book fair, and every year I went with my mother to browse. I would check out the sports books first, to see whether there were any books about baseball I had not already read (typically, no). There was also a small table of science books, and in [...]
Faculty, Topological Quantum Physics
Science evolves on Facebook. On Facebook last fall, I posted about statistical mechanics. Statistical mechanics is the physics of hordes of particles. Hordes of molecules, for example, form the stench seeping from a clogged toilet. Hordes change in certain ways but not in the reverse ways, suggesting time points in a direction. Once a stink [...]
This year marks the 50th anniversary of my first publication. In 1964, when we were eleven-year-old fifth graders, my best friend Mace Rosenstein and I launched The Pres-stein Gazette, a not-for-profit monthly. Though the first issue sold well, the second issue never appeared. Front page of the inaugural issue of the Pres-stein Gazette. Faded [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Last Friday the 13th was a lucky day for those who love physics --- The online html version of Volume 1 of the Feynman Lectures on Physics (FLP) was released! Now anyone with Internet access and a web browser can enjoy these unique lectures for free. They look beautiful. Mike Gottlieb at Caltech on [...]
Five years ago, I was staring out one of the few windowed cubicles in a cluttered office full of overambitious salespeople willing to throw their own father under a bus, if it meant a couple more dollars in commission and maybe a few more brownie points from the sweaty, beer-bellied sales manager. What was going [...]
A Sun 3/60 Workstation in the late 1980s. I recently did an interview for an educational video about quantum physics. The filmmaker, who needed some cutaway shots to stitch the interview segments together, suggested a shot of me walking through the server room in my building. I complied, gazing with [...]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2DXrs0OpHU?vq=hd720&rel=0&showinfo=0] by Jorge Cham You might think the title is a little exaggerated, but if there's one thing I've learned from Theoretical Physicists so far, it's to be bold with my conjectures about reality. Welcome to the second installment of our series of animations about Quantum Information! After an auspicious start describing doing the impossible, this [...]