Deceased--John King

John King
1925 to July 6th, 2014

"John King, professor emeritus of physics, dies at 88"

Innovative researcher and educator was a champion of attacking science problems with “ferocious vigor.”

by

Teresa Lynne Hill

July 7th, 2014

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor emeritus John G. King ’50, PhD ‘53, an experimental physicist, transformative physics educator, and leader of the MIT Molecular Beams Laboratory in the Research Laboratory for Electronics for 42 years, died on June 15 at his summer house in Wellfleet, Mass. A longtime resident of Cambridge, King was 88. The cause of death was congestive heart and renal failure.

“John was an inspiring teacher and experimentalist. His educational passion was creating hands-on experiments built from ordinary parts you can find at any hardware store, what he lovingly called ‘mulch,’” said MIT senior lecturer in physics, and former King student, Peter Dourmashkin ’76 (physics), ’78 (math), PhD ‘84. “He was MITx before MITx.”

King was born in London and educated in France, Switzerland, and the United States. He came to MIT as an undergraduate in 1943 and completed his undergraduate studies in physics following war service for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and the Harvard Underwater Sound Lab. He joined the MIT physics faculty in 1953. King was named the Francis L. Friedman Professor of Physics in 1974 and retired from MIT in 1996.

King was renowned for his null experiments — those designed to test fundamental principles. He helped develop the atomic clock and invented the molecular microscope. King’s best-known experiment, still found on the first page of most electricity and magnetism textbooks, is the measurement of the charge magnitude equality of the electron and the proton, and the neutrality of the neutron to a 10-20 of an electron charge. King also conceived an imaginative experiment, prompted by cosmological ideas, to set a hard limit on the possibility that matter, over cosmological time, begets new matter, a version of what was once called the steady state cosmology.

Building atomic and molecular beam research

Professor of physics emeritus Rainer Weiss ’55, PhD ’62 was a colleague of King throughout his student and faculty years at MIT and considers him to be “one of the most creative and imaginative experimental physicists of his generation.” Both physicists were students of Jerrold Zacharias, who began the Molecular Beam Laboratory at MIT shortly after World War II. Molecular beam experiments measure the properties of individual atoms in a vacuum unperturbed by interactions with other molecules. The technique provides precise and universally reproducible values for the energy levels and other parameters of these quantized systems. King began his work in molecular beams by pioneering new methods to measure the charge and current distributions in the nuclei of the halogens. He discovered the magnetic octupole moment of the common isotope of iodine.

During his years as director and principal investigator of the Molecular Beam Laboratory, King transformed the research conducted there. It branched into molecular beam techniques applied to collective body physics, cosmology, and biophysics. More than 100 undergraduate and 25 doctoral students obtained their degrees working on these topics during King’s tenure at the laboratory.

At a 2000 gathering to celebrate King’s career, Fred Dylla ’71, SM ’71, PhD ’75 described working in the Molecular Beams Lab as “getting your hands dirty and being surrounded by brilliant students who were around all the time.” Dylla is currently executive director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a nonprofit umbrella organization for 10 scientific societies that publishes scientific journals and provides information-based products and services.

Applying atomic beam techniques to biophysics, King invented a molecular microscope using water molecules rather than light as the illuminating projectile. His idea was to map the locations where water would evaporate or stick on small biological samples such as cells with biologically interesting spatial resolution. Working models of the device were developed for some biology labs, though the technique has yet to be widely adopted. 

When inventions such as the molecular microscope were not as successful as he had hoped, King attributed the failure to insufficient effort in combining enough money and skilled personnel. Achieving this winning combination required, in his view, an attack on the problem with “ferocious vigor.” Moderate vigor was not enough.

Reinventing physics education

Dissatisfied with the lab exercises used in mid-century physics pedagogy, King worked tirelessly on innovative methods that stressed hands-on learning and independent thinking. In 1966, he initiated the Project Lab, in which students developed their own open-ended research projects. His belief that anyone could “find something interesting to study about any mundane effect” reflects the independent spirit of King’s own early and eclectic science education. He told his students that “the best way to understand your apparatus is to build it.”

As an adviser, King quickly became a project participant. Charles H. Holbrow, professor of physics emeritus at Colgate University and currently a lecturer at MIT, recalled that King had “the wonderful gift of seeing physics in everyday phenomena and turning these into research projects.” Some 2,000 MIT undergraduates experienced Project Lab.

Approached by a student seeking a thesis experiment or a colleague with an idea, King would, before long, be sketching ideas on the backs of envelopes, estimating orders of magnitude, and offering ideas on how to build and run the experiment.  Fred Dylla’s own undergraduate thesis with King was designed to determine the difference in charge between an electron and a proton. Still considered a highly sensitive measurement, the experiment utilized $20 worth of equipment.

A King student from his MIT sophomore year through graduate school, Samuel A. Cohen, director of the Program in Plasma Science and Technology at Princeton University, learned how to operate a drill press and to build his own electron multipliers. At the same time, he was being influenced by King’s ideas. He says, “John’s mind kept jumping decades ahead, from atomic beams to superfluid He3 to molecular microscopy — always decades ahead.”

King believed that an understanding of fundamental science concepts should extend beyond physics course curricula. For years he championed the creation of a “Corridor Lab.” Never entirely realized at MIT (a couple of experiments now grace the Infinite Corridor), Corridor Lab would have placed 100 experiments, each demonstrating a scientific principle, along the miles of MIT hallways. Anyone passing could interact with an apparatus; faculty members could send students to experiment with them; and other departments could participate. King envisioned similar modules in a wide range of venues to further public understanding of science.

With other educators in the late 1950s and ‘60s, King worked on the revitalization of high school physics, following the startling realization on the part of Zacharias that “while students had taken physics, they didn’t understand anything.” When the 1957 launching of Sputnik spurred a nation-wide alarm and allocation of money to improve science teaching, King became deeply involved. In cooperation with the influential Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), he produced — and acted in —eight physics movies, including “Times and Clocks,” “Interference with Photons,” “Size of Atoms from an Atomic Beam Experiment,” and “Velocity of Atoms.” One of the films featured King demonstrating a principle of physics by driving one of the Bugatti automobiles he had meticulously restored down the Massachusetts Turnpike at high speed.

A lengthy 2009 interview for the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics shows King’s ongoing interest in science as a basis for a healthy and rewarding intellectual life. Speculating on the significance of the earliest point on the educational spectrum, he proposed that each child at birth be equipped with a kit of simple tools (balls, funnels, etc.) designed to stimulate a life of joyful investigation. A more advanced set of gear would be universally furnished at age six.

A life of invention

Family, friends, and colleagues paint a portrait of an energetic, curious, and engaging man who applied these characteristics equally to his intellectual, professional, and personal lives. King’s wife, Jane Williams, recalls him as “interesting, imaginative, ingenious and lots of fun.” In addition to his enthusiasm for physics and the value of science as the basis for understanding the world around us, she says, he was throughout his life “passionate about classical music, poetry, and any kind of dictionary. Since his early years were spent in France, he cared about things French, including French wines.”

King’s French stepfather introduced him to the tinkering that informed much of his approach to science, especially science teaching. As a high school student at Phillips Exeter Academy, he had his own laboratory. In life, as in science, he remained a relentless tinkerer, once rebuilding a bus, complete with bunks, to transport his large family to the farm in Woolwich, Maine, where he and his first wife, Elizabeth, lived for many years. She and several of their eight children still live in or around Woolwich.

King was the recipient of many honors and awards for contributions to physics and physics education. These include the Alfred P. Sloan Award (1956), the AAPT Robert Millikan Medal (1965), the E. Harris Harbison Award (1971), and the Oersted Medal (2000), the most prestigious award of the American Association of Physics Teachers. His numerous publications include co-authorship with Paul Gluck of Jerusalem of “Physics Project Labs,” (Oxford University Press) to be published in fall 2014.

In addition to his wife, King is survived by a daughter, Martha, and sons Andrew, James, Charles, David, Benjamin, and Matthew; granddaughters Sara, Katy, and Lily; stepchildren Cynthia, David, Catherine, and Nicholas; and eight stepgrandchildren. His oldest son Alan predeceased him.

A memorial service will take place at MIT in October.

John G. King [Wikipedia]

When physicists get bored..."Decay"

"Watch this: 'Decay,' a zombie movie made by physicists and filmed at the Large Hadron Collider"

by

Adi Robertson

December 9th, 2012

THE VERGE

Zombie movies are a dime a dozen, but Decay, a full-length film released for free online today, offers an unusual setting for the rise of the living dead. Decay was shot on location at CERN by Luke Thompson, a University of Manchester physics Ph.D. student and first-time filmmaker, and its plot injects zombies into the search for the Higgs Boson, which was likely discovered earlier this year. Other physics students and at least one professor round out the small cast and crew.

In many ways, Decay is standard B-horror, but the dark tunnels around the Large Hadron Collider make for some fantastically creepy scenes. Thompson also hopes that it will satirize popular perceptions of science — the LHC, particularly, has been the epicenter for speculation about world-destroying black holes and other types of super-science. While CERN has no official involvement in the project (the film wasn't set in sensitive locations), it's told Wired that Decay "shows how pure science can stimulate creativity."

Deceased--John A. Wheeler

John A. Wheeler

April 14th, 2008

The New York Times

John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term 'Black Hole,' Is Dead at 96

by

Dennis Overbye

John A. Wheeler, a visionary physicist and teacher who helped invent the theory of nuclear fission, gave black holes their name and argued about the nature of reality with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, died Sunday morning at his home in Hightstown, N.J. He was 96.

The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter Alison Wheeler Lahnston.

Dr. Wheeler was a young, impressionable professor in 1939 when Bohr, the Danish physicist and his mentor, arrived in the United States aboard a ship from Denmark and confided to him that German scientists had succeeded in splitting uranium atoms. Within a few weeks, he and Bohr had sketched out a theory of how nuclear fission worked. Bohr had intended to spend the time arguing with Einstein about quantum theory, but "he spent more time talking to me than to Einstein," Dr. Wheeler later recalled.

As a professor at Princeton and then at the University of Texas in Austin, Dr. Wheeler set the agenda for generations of theoretical physicists, using metaphor as effectively as calculus to capture the imaginations of his students and colleagues and to pose questions that would send them, minds blazing, to the barricades to confront nature.

Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of Dr. Wheeler, "For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing."

Under his leadership, Princeton became the leading American center of research into Einsteinian gravity, known as the general theory of relativity — a field that had been moribund because of its remoteness from laboratory experiment.

"He rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians," said Freeman Dyson, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study across town in Princeton.

Among Dr. Wheeler's students was Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology, who parlayed a crazy-sounding suggestion by Dr. Wheeler into work that led to a Nobel Prize. Another was Hugh Everett, whose Ph.D. thesis under Dr. Wheeler on quantum mechanics envisioned parallel alternate universes endlessly branching and splitting apart — a notion that Dr. Wheeler called "Many Worlds" and which has become a favorite of many cosmologists as well as science fiction writers.

Recalling his student days, Dr. Feynman once said, "Some people think Wheeler's gotten crazy in his later years, but he’s always been crazy."

John Archibald Wheeler — he was Johnny Wheeler to friends and fellow scientists — was born on July 9, 1911, in Jacksonville, Fla. The oldest child in a family of librarians, he earned his Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University at 21. A year later, after becoming engaged to an old acquaintance, Janette Hegner, after only three dates, he sailed to Copenhagen to work with Bohr, the godfather of the quantum revolution, which had shaken modern science with paradoxical statements about the nature of reality.

"You can talk about people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, but the thing that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr," Dr. Wheeler said.

Their relationship was renewed when Bohr arrived in 1939 with the ominous news of nuclear fission. In the model he and Dr. Wheeler developed to explain it, the atomic nucleus, containing protons and neutrons, is like a drop of liquid. When a neutron emitted from another disintegrating nucleus hits it, this "liquid drop" starts vibrating and elongates into a peanut shape that eventually snaps in two.

Two years later, Dr. Wheeler was swept up in the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. To his lasting regret, the bomb was not ready in time to change the course of the war in Europe and possibly save his brother Joe, who died in combat in Italy in 1944.

Dr. Wheeler continued to do government work after the war, interrupting his research to help develop the hydrogen bomb, promote the building of fallout shelters and support the Vietnam War and missile defense, even as his views ran counter to those of his more liberal colleagues.

Dr. Wheeler was once officially reprimanded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for losing a classified document on a train, but he also received the Atomic Energy Commission's Enrico Fermi Award from President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.

When Dr. Wheeler received permission in 1952 to teach a course on Einsteinian gravity, it was not considered an acceptable field to study. But in promoting general relativity, he helped transform the subject in the 1960s, at a time when Dennis Sciama, at Cambridge University in England, and Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, at Moscow State University, founded groups that spawned a new generation of gravitational theorists and cosmologists.

One particular aspect of Einstein's theory got Dr. Wheeler’s attention. In 1939, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who would later be a leader in the Manhattan Project, and a student, Hartland Snyder, suggested that Einstein’s equations had made an apocalyptic prediction. A dead star of sufficient mass could collapse into a heap so dense that light could not even escape from it. The star would collapse forever while spacetime wrapped around it like a dark cloak. At the center, space would be infinitely curved and matter infinitely dense, an apparent absurdity known as a singularity.

Dr. Wheeler at first resisted this conclusion, leading to a confrontation with Dr. Oppenheimer at a conference in Belgium in 1958, in which Dr. Wheeler said that the collapse theory “does not give an acceptable answer” to the fate of matter in such a star. "He was trying to fight against the idea that the laws of physics could lead to a singularity," Dr. Charles Misner, a professor at the University of Maryland and a former student, said. In short, how could physics lead to a violation itself — to no physics?

Dr. Wheeler and others were finally brought around when David Finkelstein, now an emeritus professor at Georgia Tech, developed mathematical techniques that could treat both the inside and the outside of the collapsing star.

At a conference in New York in 1967, Dr. Wheeler, seizing on a suggestion shouted from the audience, hit on the name "black hole" to dramatize this dire possibility for a star and for physics.

The black hole "teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but," he wrote in his 1999 autobiography, Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics. (Its co-author is Kenneth Ford, a former student and a retired director of the American Institute of Physics.)

In 1973, Dr. Wheeler and two former students, Dr. Misner and Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology, published “Gravitation,” a 1,279-page book whose witty style and accessibility — it is chockablock with sidebars and personality sketches of physicists — belies its heft and weighty subject. It has never been out of print.

In the summers, Dr. Wheeler would retire with his extended family to a compound on High Island, Me., to indulge his taste for fireworks by shooting beer cans out of an old cannon.

He and Janette were married in 1935. She died in October 2007 at 99. Dr. Wheeler is survived by their three children, Ms. Lahnston and Letitia Wheeler Ufford, both of Princeton; James English Wheeler of Ardmore, Pa.; 8 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, 6 step-grandchildren and 11 step-great-grandchildren.

In 1976, faced with mandatory retirement at Princeton, Dr. Wheeler moved to the University of Texas.

At the same time, he returned to the questions that had animated Einstein and Bohr, about the nature of reality as revealed by the strange laws of quantum mechanics. The cornerstone of that revolution was the uncertainty principle, propounded by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, which seemed to put fundamental limits on what could be known about nature, declaring, for example, that it was impossible, even in theory, to know both the velocity and the position of a subatomic particle. Knowing one destroyed the ability to measure the other. As a result, until observed, subatomic particles and events existed in a sort of cloud of possibility that Dr. Wheeler sometimes referred to as "a smoky dragon."

This kind of thinking frustrated Einstein, who once asked Dr. Wheeler if the Moon was still there when nobody looked at it.

But Dr. Wheeler wondered if this quantum uncertainty somehow applied to the universe and its whole history, whether it was the key to understanding why anything exists at all.

"We are no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, or fields of force, or geometry, or even space and time," Dr. Wheeler wrote in 1981. "Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself."

At a 90th birthday celebration in 2003, Dr. Dyson said that Dr. Wheeler was part prosaic calculator, a "master craftsman," who decoded nuclear fission, and part poet. "The poetic Wheeler is a prophet," he said, "standing like Moses on the top of Mount Pisgah, looking out over the promised land that his people will one day inherit." Wojciech Zurek, a quantum theorist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said that Dr. Wheeler’s most durable influence might be the students he had "brought up." He wrote in an e-mail message, "I know I was transformed as a scientist by him — not just by listening to him in the classroom, or by his physics idea: I think even more important was his confidence in me."

Dr. Wheeler described his own view of his role to an interviewer 25 years ago.

"If there's one thing in physics I feel more responsible for than any other, it’s this perception of how everything fits together," he said. "I like to think of myself as having a sense of judgment. I’m willing to go anywhere, talk to anybody, ask any question that will make headway.

I confess to being an optimist about things, especially about someday being able to understand how things are put together. So many young people are forced to specialize in one line or another that a young person can't afford to try and cover this waterfront — only an old fogy who can afford to make a fool of himself."

"If I don’t, who will?"

A chuckle...

Old/New Element: "Governmentium"

For those who have not stayed abreast with the new Large Hadron Collider there is bad news. The new element is not a rumor but seems to have been around for a few centuries.

The new element has been named Governmentium.

Governmentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second to take over four days to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isotopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium — an element which radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

"The Love Boson"

by

Lynda Williams

The Standard Model of Physics
has four forces in it:
the Strong, the Weak, Gravity
and the Electromagnetic.
But I've discovered a new force
that rules from high above.
Let me propose to you
a Unified Theory of Love!

Gluons are Strong!
They make a quantum-chromo glue
binding quarks into atoms
like I am bound to you.

Z's and W's are Weak!
They make particles decay
and atoms radioactive
that's how I feel when you're away.

Photons mediate E&M -
both particle and wave - they're so
yin-yang!

Gravitons attract
both mass and energy
they make the world go round and round
that's what you do to me.

And so I'm searching for the boson
that mediates the force of Love!
But you can't measure it!
You can only feel it!

Pulling on the superstrings of your heart!
We should add it to the Standard Model Chart
the force that rules from high above
in a Unified Field Theory of Love!

1998 Lynda Williams

Elementary particle...the "Peon"

Physicists have an extremely diverse range of hobbies. Though they traditionally enjoy such outdoor activities as llama hunting and SCUBA running (entering marathons while donning the SCUBA gear, flippers and all), the recent trend has been towards a more challenging task: predicting and naming elementary particles prior to their discovery.

If Hideki Yukawa can predict the existence of the muon before it was ever seen, I too can follow in a similar fashion. I propose the possibility of a new particle - the peon.

The peon is a rather simple particle and by far the coolest. Just like all good particles, it has an evil twin brother, the anti-peon, where a collision between the two results in an annihilation into ambivalence:

It will be the heaviest of the heavy elementary particles, in a group known as the carryons. Topping the scales at an incredible 2045 MeV (mostly because of its beer gut), it is composed of even smaller particles known as quarks. Quarks, as most good people know, are of six types: up, down, strange, charmed, bottom, and top. The existence of the peon depends on the existence of two new quarks, the good and evil quarks.

It is one of the most elusive of the elementary particles, so it will be extremely difficult to locate. Most likely, peons will be found hitching a ride on gravity waves, which are tough to measure as it is. Steps have already been taken to find these waves. In 1969, Joseph Weber developed what came to be known as the Weber Bar. With this device he had hoped to lure the peons, known for their lack of morals) for a drink or two, but Weber ran into problems as other nonethical particles (especially those leptons) kept riding through on their Harley waves, causing too many disturbances in his bar. It became impossible to pinpoint the peon in the midst of such a ruckus.

The bubble chamber offers the best hope for finding the peon. The bubble chamber is a large container filled with liquid hydrogen. As charged particles zip through it they leave a path of angry ionized hydrogen atoms. Much can be learned about the particles by examining this path and by interviewing the upset atoms. However, to find the peon, one replaces the liquid hydrogen with cold lager and indeed, the path left by the peon will resemble a drunken stupor.

The Ten Commandments for Amateur Astronomers

1. Thou shalt have no white light before thee, behind thee, or to the side of thee whilst sharing the night sky with thy fellow stargazers.

2. Thou shalt not love thy telescope more than thy spouse or thy children; as much as, maybe, but not more.

3. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's telescope, unless it exceeds in aperture or electronics twice that of thy wildest dreams.

4. Thou shalt not read Astronomy or Sky & Telescope on company time, for thine employer makes it possible to continue thine astronomical hobby.

5. Thou shalt have at least two telescopes so as to keep thy spouse interested when the same accompanies thee under the night sky or on eclipse expeditions to strange lands where exotic wild animals
doth roam freely.

6. Thou shalt not allow either thy sons or thy daughters to get married during the Holy Days of Starfest.

7. Thou shalt not reveal to thy spouse the true cost of thy telescope collection; only the individual components, and that shallbe done with great infrequency.

8. Thou shalt not buy thy spouse any lenses, filters, dew shields, maps, charts, or any other necessities for Christmas, anniversaries, or birthdays unless thy spouse needs them for their own telescope.

9. Thou shalt not deceive thy spouse into thinking that ye are taking them for a romantic Saturday night drive when indeed thou art heading for a dark sky site.

10. Thou shalt not store thy telescope in thy living room,
dining room, or bedroom, lest thou be sleeping with it full time.

Some Fermilab humor?
Godzilla jealous?
Don't mess with the 400 foot Japanese monster

Einstein vs. Godzilla: The Green Guy Wins

So who’s this Einstein guy I keep hearing about? He writes these five papers a hundred years ago, and now the whole world wants a year to glorify him? Booshwah, I say. This year is WYOG — World Year of Godzilla, my 50th anniversary, kicking off my second half-century of tromping on Tokyo and New York, and whomping on any monster wannabe or pusillanimous professor I spot along the way. If this bad-hair egghead wants to do some banging — BRING IT ON!

Now, if, as some say, I’m the kinder, gentler sort of radiation mutation, I admit this much: I do give the guy a tip of my hat. "Einstein, old pal," I say, "I really do owe it all to you, bless your relativistic, chain-reacting little heart. Why, without E=mc2, I would never have seen the light of day." It’s true, too. Split some atoms here and there, toss in a little 1950s-style superpower brinkmanship, test a few nuclear devices, and — AAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH! — I come bursting on the scene with tongue flaming and top billing right from the start: "GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS!" It is good to be the king.

Sure, you've been on the cover of Time, Einstein, but do they call you "EINSTEIN, KING OF THE PHYSICISTS"? Do populations flee in fear when you're near? No way, sockless savant! You got your five papers in early, but how many did you do 50 years later? Ha! I thought so. My 29th movie just came out in Japan last month — and I'm still doing all my own stunts! Match that, equation-head. You say you've still got some tricks up your sleeve, Einstein? Remember King Kong? I fought King Kong. I outlasted King Kong. And Einstein, you're no King Kong!

Symmetry, Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2005

"Atom and Eve"

Annually, the world is presented with a tongue-in-cheek awards ceremony called the "Ig Nobel Awards" given to scientists who research some rather bizarre subjects. Fun and humor abounds. Each ceremony is opened with a mini opera such as the one below.

Libretto:

"Atom and Eve"

A tale of inter-scalar romance, in 4 acts

Words by

Marc Abrahams

2003

ACT 1 -- "No Wandering Atom I"

NARRATOR (spoken): Tonight's opera is a love story. Eve is a lovely young scientist who falls in love with Atom. Atom is an oxygen atom. There are some obvious difficulties to be overcome.

Staging this opera presented a difficulty for us. We were unable to find an experienced singer who is small enough to play the role of Atom. And so we will make do with Jason McStoots. Jason, will you please come out here and take a bow? You in the audience will have to imagine that he is actually the size of an oxygen atom.

Our other main character, Eve, will be played by Margot Button. Margot, will you please come out here and take a bow? Margot is exactly the right size to play a beautiful scientist. You in the audience will have to imagine that she is actually the size you see here. And now, we begin the opera.

Atom is a poor, solitary atom, who yearns for companionship and true love. One day, Atom feels something strange and wonderful. Someone is looking at him through a scanning probe microscope. Perhaps, Atom wonders, perhaps that someone could be... the woman of his dreams. Let's join little Atom now as this thought enters his tiny mind.

[MUSIC: "A Wandering Minstrel I," by Arthur Sullivan, from the Mikado]

ATOM:

It's elementary.

I know I'm just an atom,

Down in the lowest stratum

Of humblest society.

From what I learned in school

I know I should be bonding.

My parents are desponding

Because I'm not a molecule.

My future seems so, so, so very miniscule.

What if I dream of bigger things?

They will object.

Oh, sorrow!

They say I'm made of tiny strings.

Are they correct?

Oh, sorrow, sorrow!

I feel some larger force

From some enormous source.

I dream of inter--.

Can we connect?

Tomorrow? Tomorrow?

Oh, a woman's love is just what I have wanted.

But women are on such a bigger scale

That a nanoscopic guy could well be daunted --

Yet somehow I don't think that I will fail!

It's true that I don't have a massive body.

Yes, it's true that what I've got is pretty crude.

Eight protons may seem far from being gaudy,

By thirty orders, more or less, of magnitude.

My unseen love may be looking at me

Through some big microscope.

If she's not a he, I am sure that she

Is excited at what little she can see --

At least that is what I hope!

I feel her gaze in a glancing way,

But how can she really know

That of all of the zillion little dots,

That in that crowd

There is standing proud

One who has the hots for her --

Though he's just a little schmoe!

No wandering atom I,

Now that I have caught snatches

Of who my perfect match is.

This very Eve I will try-y-y somehow to catch... this gigantical lady's eye!

ACT 2 -- "Eve's Song"

NARRATOR: Back in Act One of our opera, the little oxygen atom, Atom, intuited that someone was watching him through an atomic force microscope. Here in Act Two, we discover that that someone is Eve, a lovely scientist. For Eve, looking down through her microscope, it's love at first sight. Let's join Eve as she ogles her little Atom.

[MUSIC: "Poor Wand'ring One," by Arthur Sullivan, from "Pirates of Penzance"]

[EVE is peering down into her microscope. Her FELLOW SCIENTISTS watch her. All are wearing lab coats.]

EVE:

Poor wand'ring one!

Look at this oxygen atom,

See him attract!

See me react!

See my heart run!

Could we combine?

Or would such love be forbidden?

Love that entails

Such diff’rent scales --

Eensy and elephantine?

Does he know I exist?

If so, then will he resist

All the force of my nature

That yearns for us to have kissed?

Will he ask for a date?

When? Oh, when? Oh, why should he wait?

Here's a technical challenge:

Now, how will we copu---?

How-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow?

How-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow?

How-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow?

How-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow?

How will we mate --

I and this oxygen atom?

Well now, gee whiz,

The answer is:

I will oxygenate!

ACT 3 -- "I'm Nano!"

NARRATOR: In Act Three of our opera, the little oxygen atom, Atom, devises a clever way that he and his soon-to-be-beloved Eve can meet up. Let’s join Atom now, and listen to his little cogitations.

[MUSIC: "Titwillow," by Arthur Sullivan, from the Mikado]

ATOM:

Oh, an oxygen atom is really quite small.

O, I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

Why, compared to a woman, I'm nothing at all.

O, I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

For conventional wooing, I'm not well designed,

But so what if my toolkit is underdefined?

I've a plan of a rather adventurous kind.

I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

She inhales lots of oxygen with every breath.

O, I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

Now, if she hyperventilates, she'll cause my death.

O, I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

But if she breathes in softly, I'll go with the flow --

Diffuse in through a lung, and then next thing you know,

Hooked on fresh hemoglobin -- a-riding I'll go!

I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

Sitting in a red blood cell, I’ll zip through a vein.

O, I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

And the bloodstream will carry me straight to her brain.

O, I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

Once inside her cerebrum, who knows what I'll find --

If I’m lucky, a place to relax and unwind.

See, the main thing I hope is: she'll keep me in mind!

I'm nano! I'm nano! I'm nano!

ACT 4 -- "Bose-Einstein Condensate"

NARRATOR: When we last saw little Atom, he was hoping that Eve would breathe him into her lungs, from which point he would then enter the bloodstream and travel to Eve's brain. Alas, Eve was so-o-o-o-o excited that she hyperventilated. So, that plan turned out to be a no-brainer.

Now, here, in the final act of the opera, science will come to the rescue! The physics community, in a great triumph, has just figured out how to make a BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATE. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, a huge number of atoms are cooled, using laser beams, to a temperature that is staggeringly cold. When that happens -- as predicted by the theories of Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in the year 1926 -- when that happens, ALL the atoms suddenly behave as if they are a SINGLE, GIGANTIC, ATOM.

Let's watch as the scientists transform our little Atom into a gigantic, handsome, Bose-Einstein condensate.

[MUSIC: "El Capitan," by John Philip Sousa]

FELLOW SCIENTIST:

We did it all for love.

We cooled some atoms with laser beams,

With physics way above

The stuff of missile defenders' dreams.

The atoms conflate

Into one great

Big Bose-Einstein condensate.

We'll do it now for love ---

We'll take this atom who's unfulfilled.

Give him the wherewithof ---

A manly cool, and a massive build.

Put him in a state

To consummate

His Bose-Einstein dinner date.

Turn on the lasers NOW! [this line is shouted in unison by ALL the scientists on stage]

Each tuned to a special frequency,

A color of potent piquancy!

And now watch us create

A serviceable atomic condensate!

[The LASER BEAMS are turned on. ATOM materializes, full-size.]

Oh, gosh! Oh, gee! Oh, WOW! [this line is shouted in unison by ALL the scientists on stage]

This atom has now been re-defined

As something resembling humankind.

We've made a man of him --

Well, technic'lly speaking, more a synonym.

EVE:

Yes, yes! My little Atom has grown up, and come to stay.

He'll never go away.

I'll see him ev'ry day!

FELLOW SCIENTIST:

No, no! Your little Atom's big day is a little blip.

Cause when we turn the lasers off, he's zip.

EVE:

Oh, my!

FELLOW SCIENTIST:

The best we can suggest

Is something we can do to YOU:

You, too, we can condense.

But that's a bit intense.

EVE:

Why not? Yes, squish me down into a single molecule.

One molecule! That's really COOL!

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Oh, yes! Please condense me now!

Cause if you don't, you'll incense me now!

FELLOW SCIENTIST:

You heard her. So, let's condense her now.

What joie de vivre!

Good-bye now, Eve!

[The SCIENTISTS crush EVE. ATOM looks suddenly very, very afraid.]

Now let's turn off all those laser beams.

This Atom seems

Just the type who screams.

[The LASER BEAMS turn off. ATOM shrivels and vanishes.]

A little love is a lovely sight,

But love this slight...

Just isn't right.

"At the Party with the Physicists"

One day, all of the world's famous physicists decided to get together for a party [okay, there were some non-physicists too who crashed the party]. Fortunately, the doorman was a grad student and was able to observe some of the guests...

Everyone gravitated toward Newton, but he just kept moving around at a constant velocity and showed no reaction.

Einstein thought it was a relatively good time.

Coulomb got a real charge out of the whole thing.

Thompson enjoyed the plum pudding.

Pauli came late, but was mostly excluded from things, so he split.

Pascal was under too much pressure to enjoy himself.

Ohm spent most of the time resisting Ampere's opinions on current events.

Volta thought the social had a lot of potential.

Heisenberg may or may not have been there.

Feynman got from the door to the buffet table by taking every possible path

The Curies were there and just glowed the whole time.

Millikan dropped his Italian oil dressing.

de Broglie mostly just stood in the corner and waved.

Everyone was attracted to Tesla's magnetic personality.

Bohr ate too much and got atomic ache.

Watt turned out to be a powerful speaker.

Hertz went back to the buffet table several times a minute.

Faraday had quite a capacity for food.

Oppenheimer got bombed.

The microwave started radiating in the background when Penzias and Wilson showed up.

Gamow left the party early with a big bang while Hoyle stayed late in a steady state.

For Schrodinger this was more a wave function rather than a social function.

Born thought the probability of enjoying himself was pretty high.

Pauling wanted to bond with everyone.

Pavlov brought his dog; which promptly chased after Schrodinger's cat.

Zeno of Elea came with two friends - Achilles and the tortoise.

Bill Gates came to install windows.

The food was beautifully laid out by Mendeleyev on the periodic table.

Watson and Crick danced the Double Helix.

Maxwell's demon argued with Dawkin's friend, the selfish Gene.

Rontgen saw through everybody.

Descartes cogitated, "I think I am drunk. Therefore I am at the party."

Bush dumps Space Shutte program

Jim Carrey & Conan O'Brian Discuss Quantum Physics

Physicists--recorded moments

It is a pity that audio and visual recordings weren't possible throughout man's history. But here are four items...

Ernest Rutherford

"The bother is that a nucleus, as you know, is a very small thing, and we know very little about it. Now, I had the opinion for a long time, that's a personal conviction, that if we knew more about the nucleus, we'd find it was a much simpler thing than we suppose, that these fundamental things I think have got to be fairly simple. But it's the non-fundamental things that are very complex usually. I am always a believer in simplicity being a simple person myself."

Ernest Rutherford

J. J. Thompson

"Could anything at first sight seem more impractical than a body which is so small that its mass is an insignificant fraction of the mass of an atom of hydrogen, which itself is so small that a crowd of these atoms equal in number to the population of the whole world would be too small to have been detected by any means then known to science."

J. J. Thompson

Niels Bohr

"If, twenty-five years ago, I had the good fortune to give a modest contribution to this development, it was, above all, thanks to the hospitality I then, as a young man, enjoyed in the famous laboratories of England. In particular, I think with grateful emotion of the unique friendliness and straightforwardness with which Rutherford, in the midst of his unceasing creative activity, was always prepared to listen to any student behind whose youthful inexperience he perceived a serious interest."

Niels Bohr

Solvay Conference

Physicists gather to engage in "quantum" chat at the Solvay Conference in Brussels, October 1927. Here is some film footage of the event.

"The following is a "home movie" shot by Irving Langmuir, (the 1932 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry). It captures 2 minutes of an intermission in the proceedings. Twenty-one of the 29 attendees are on the film. The film opens with quick shots of Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr. Auguste Piccard of the University of Brussels follows and then the camera re-focuses on Schrödinger and Bohr."

Solvay Conference