Finding patterns

Stephen W. Morris is a pattern finding scientist in the most vivid sense.

tp://www.flickr.com/photos/nonlin/sets/

I am particularly taken with these images of Chladni plates (the violin shape at 762.4 Hz and the square at 5,875.5 Hz).  

A thin metal plate shaken vertical by a post in the centre will vibrate in a certain mode pattern. The pattern can be made visible by sprinkling white sand or salt on the plate. The grains are shaken off the areas where the plate is moving most violently (the anti-nodes) and collects on the non-moving regions (nodal lines). This technique was originally invented by Robert Hooke, but made famous by Ernst Chladni in the late 18th century.

Violin makers use Chladni Figures to tune boards used to make violins. Here the violin is a sheet of aluminum about 1 meter long.

And I like this quote from Stephen's website:

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Henri Poincaré

Stephen's website http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~smorris/smorris.html

In response, I add the electron probability density for the first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections. 

Nabokov: art and science

The lepidopterist and writer, Vladimir Nabokov said of the gap between science and art:

'a mere dimple of a ditch that a small frog could straddle'.

Writing on windows

When I first arrived at Imperial College and met Terry Rudolph, there were equations and diagrams on the window.   It seemed like an apt metaphor for the way we understand the world.  Always making intepretations - models - theories, limited by our senses, limited by the four sides and the glass - we can never reach 'reality'.  Though the light keeps shining through and hopefully will get brighter.

The Schrodinger wave equation is at the bottom of the image.

Physicists' glasses

Discussions with people about how they envision physics and the world, got us talking about glasses. Here is a small collection of images of glasses sent to me by physicists.  Each struck me as a kind of self portrait.

David Herrera Marti and his glasses which he keeps taking on and off

Sania Jevtic and her glasses of many different colours

Andrew Jaffe's glasses and an inflatable model of the cosmic background radiation - or 'big bang' as we 'see' it today

First experiment to explore the Bell Inequality - Freedman, Clauser

Stuart Freedman and John Clauser, explored the phenomenon of entanglement and the Bell Inequality in the early 70's at Berkeley.  Note the beautiful correlation between experiment.

Images courtesy of Stuart Freedman - Berkeley. 

Rebecca Elson - 'Girl with a Balloon'

From this, the universe

In its industrial age,

With all the stars lit up

Roaring, banging, spitting,

Their black ash settling

Into every form of life,

You might look back with longing

To the weightlessness, the elemental,

Of the early years.

As leaning out the window

You might see a child

Going down the road,

A red balloon,

A little bit of pure Big Bang,

Bobbing at the end of her string

Note: Most of the helium in the universe was created in the Big Bang.

Rebecca Elson was an astrophysicist and poet.