Invited Talks (Confirmed)
(Updated March 23, 2001)
Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation: Where We Are and Where We Are Going
Robert C. Hilborn
Department of Physics, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts 01002
Physicists made three major contributions to scientific understanding in the
twentieth century: relativity, quantum mechanics, and nonlinear dynamics.
In this talk I will provide an introduction to nonlinear dynamics and pattern
formation for non-specialists, focusing on the current state of these fields
and prospects for the future. Examples will be chosen from a wide variety
of fields including physics, biology, and economics.
Mixing and Dynamical Systems
Jerry P. Gollub
Department of Physics, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania 19041
Mixing is important in many areas of science involving fluids, for example geophysical fluid dynamics and chemical processing. Nonlinear dynamics has contributed to thinking about mixing for more than a century, since the early days of statistical mechanics. Mixing involves the stretching and folding of fluid elements followed by diffusion, and can be produced even in ordered and coherent fluid flows that lack the spatial and temporal disorder of turbulence. Here I present experiments on transient mixing driven by electromagnetic forces, in which a localized impurity is eventually dispersed in a conducting fluid. Both particles and fluorescent dyes are tracked at high speeds to gain insight. I will discuss how ideas from nonlinear dynamics can help us to understand mixing in fluids.
Experiences of an AJP Editor
Robert H. Romer
American Journal of Physics and Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts 01002
For the last 13 years I have had the privilege of editing the American Journal of Physics (to which I myself have been a subscriber for almost half a century). This uniquely important physics journal is distinguished not only by its content and its special role in the physics community; it is also the world's largest circulation physics journal (and almost certainly the one that is most read), and its acceptance rate (approximately 25%) is even lower than that of Physical Review Letters and far lower than that of almost all other physics journals. (The acceptance/submission ratio has a nontrivial effect on author-editor interactions.) I will discuss some of the history of AJP and describe something of what it is like to be its editor: the workload and the stress, the criteria for acceptance and the decision making process, the judgment calls, some of the new physics I have learned through my work, some of the best papers I have worked on, and (without identifying details) some of the more interesting papers and difficult authors I have encountered. Most important, I will describe the monthly satisfaction that comes with the arrival of a new issue in my mailbox.
Applied Chaos: Ship Dynamics and Waveguide Propagation
Randall P. Tagg
Department of Physics, University of Colorado at Denver, Denver, Colorado 80217-3364
One of the exciting possibilities for chaos in physical systems is the opportunity
to find useful features of the structure in chaotic dynamics. Two examples
will illustrate this. The first example is the control of operations on board
ships under circumstances where chaos can be found in the dynamics. One such
operation is the moving of loads using cranes while ships are moored offshore:
the problem is related to a parametrically forced pendulum. Another example
is the the exhibition of chaotic ray propagation, at least in principle, in
suitably modified waveguides. Here open questions remain regarding the observability
and use of such structure in real waveguide systems (fiber optics, ocean waveguides,
etc.). Interestingly, the structure of the problem again relates to the parametrically
forced pendulum and the problem also shows an unusual application of Hamilton's
equations.
Six Ideas That Shaped Physics: Past, Present and Future
Thomas A. Moore
Department of Physics, Pomona College, Claremont, California 91711
For more than a decade, I have been working on a new approach to the introductory
calculus-based physics course entitled "Six Ideas That Shaped Physics."
In this talk, I will explore the origins of this reform project and what I
originally hoped to accomplish, an overview of the project's current status
and how well it is achieving its goals, and present a tantalizing glimpse
of the revision of the texts currently in progress. I hope that there will
be plenty of time at the end for questions and discussion.
BANQUET SPEAKER:
Dancing with Bears: Lessons in the Dance of Reform
Thomas A. Moore
Department of Physics, Pomona College, Claremont, California 91711
The process of reforming the introductory calculus-based physics course amounts
to a dance with a number of strange and potentially disturbing partners, a
dance that in my experience has been full of unexpected twists, unintended
consequences, and marvelous ironies. In this talk, I will explore some general
lessons about things I have learned in more than 14 years of being an educational
reformer and an author of an introductory text, including lessons in the Publishers'
Reel, the Pre-Med Two-Step, the Lecturer's Backslide, the Adoption Polka,
and more!
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