Condensed concepts

Physicists are notorious for thinking they can revolutionise other fields. The results are often embarrassing. Previously, I considered how to (not) break into a new field.  One of the basic points ito remember is that there is a lot of nuance, a lot of rich history, and a lot of very smart hard-working people associated with any worthwhile intellectual endeavour. In 2015  Steven Weinberg  published To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science. In the book he belittles all the nuance that historians of science bring to the subject. One review was entitled, Why Scientists Shouldn’t Write History . The Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has a new book out,  Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress . The book spans cognitive science, history, philosophy, economics, and politics.... It is receiving a lot of attention in the popular press. My UQ history colleague, Peter Harrison has a robust critique, The Enlightenment of Steven Pinke

I think one of the greatest moments of being a teacher or student is when the student understands or learns something that they find exciting, satisfying, or stimulating. In this "Ah hah!" or Wow! moment they will say "That is really cool!" or "That is beautiful!" or something similar. These moments can be so significant that the student can years later even remember the exact time, location, or circumstance in which the event happened. Did you have any such experiences when you were an undergraduate? I reflected on my own experience. Even though it is almost 40 years ago I can remember what I learnt and sometimes the place, the book, the person, ... Here is some of the things that immediately came to mind. They are listed in random order. It is interesting that many involve learning how one result follows from a more fundamental result with a simple mathematical proof. Often it meant there was a deeper reason for something we had previously been tol

What is spin ice ? What its definitive and experimental signatures? A good place to start is the lucid discussion by Roderich Moessner and Art Ramirez in a 2006 article on Geometrical Frustration . They emphasise two organising principles: local constraints on neigbouring spins and the emergence of new entities such as gauge fields. First, let's discuss the "ice" bit since this involves some beautiful chemistry, physics, statistical mechanics, and history. In the solid phase of water at atmospheric pressure ( ice Ih ) the water molecules form a hexagonal lattice, with the oxygen atoms located a the vertices of the lattice. The molecules interact with one another via hydrogen bonds. Now the key point is that there are many different ways of orienting the water molecules (arranging the protons). The only constraint is that one has to have two protons covalently bonded to the oxygen and two protons on next-nearest neighbour water molecules hydrogen bonded to the

There is an excellent editorial in the journal Langmuir Writing Theory and Modeling Papers for Langmuir: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Han Zuilhof, Shu-Hong Yu, David S. Sholl The article is written in the context of a specific journal, that has a focus on surface and colloid chemistry, and predominantly experimental papers and readers. The article is structured around the five questions below, that should actually be asked about any theory or computational paper. Who is the intended audience? Specifically, will the paper have an influence on the experimental community? Are approximations and limitations clearly described?  What physical insight is gained?  Where does theory touch reality?  Specifically, how does the work relate to experiment? Does it suggest new experiments to test the theory? How can calculations be made reproducible?  This is helpful advice and good for anyone to reflect on. On the other hand, this is so basic that the need for such an editorial

This is almost the same post I wrote a year ago.  This is the first week of classes for the beginning of the academic year in Australia. In preparation for a busy semester, I took last week off work and visited my son in Canberra (where I grew up) and spent some time hiking in  one of my favourite places , Kosciusko National Park. This reminded me of the importance of vacations and  down time , of the  therapeutic value of the nature drug , and of  turning off your email occasionally. One thing I am very thankful for is that my mental health is so much better than it was a year ago, arguably because of being pro-active. Below is a picture of our campsite near Mount Tate . My son pointed out that it is possible that night we were the highest people in Australia since we did not see anyone else for 24 hours and you are not allowed to camp near some of the higher peaks, such as Mt. Kosciusko.

About five years ago Massive On-Line Courses (MOOCs) were all the rage among politicians and university managers. Like most hyped up fashions, they have lost their gloss as reality has set in. There are no simple panaceas, particularly technological ones, for the complexities of tertiary education. I have previously e xpressed skepticism and concern  about MOOCs, but recently I have rethought some of my views. Last year I was visiting some friends in a small Majority World college and I noticed that one of the administrators had a copy of the book Poor Economics on his desk. I told him how much I liked it and he said that he had really enjoyed and benefited from taking the associated on-line course at MIT. Then he said, "But the online course I really like is the Oxford one, From Poverty to Prosperity , by Paul Collier .'' Wow! To me, this represents the best of on-line courses; when they provide access to educational opportunities that were inconceivable a decad

I was very sad to learn last week of the tragic death of Seth Olsen in an accident. He was a former collaborator and colleague at UQ. Seth was an outstanding and energetic scientist who easily crossed discipline boundaries, especially between chemistry, physics, and molecular biology. Much of what I know about computational quantum chemistry, fluorescent proteins, conical intersections, and diabatic states, I learnt from Seth. He played a significant role in this blog. A search revealed that his name is mentioned in more than 70 posts. Many posts were stimulated by his work, his questions, or his suggestions. He often wrote comments, covering a wide range of topics. I found his interest helpful and stimulating. Seth grew up in the USA. He was a physics major at the College of William and Mary. In 2004 he completed a Ph.D in in Biophysics and Computational Biology at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His thesis was entitled, ` Electronic Excited States of Green Fluor