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Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
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Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#52> Lee became Dr. Fermi’s sole doctoral student in theoretical physics, meeting with him every week. It was an extraordinary learning experience, partly because of Dr. Fermi’s teaching technique, which Dr. Lee explained in the 2007 interview with the Nobel Institute. “‘You see,’ he said, ‘there are things that I would like to know,’” Dr. Lee recalled Dr. Fermi saying. “‘Lee, why don’t you look up and give me a lecture…
> Fermi, made Lee teach him stuff, not the other way around!
In grad school, one of my profs said something to the effect of, "We expect you to aggressively eradicate any ignorance you have on the whatever papers we assign to you before lecture."
Then we were Socratically interrogated in lecture. For me, it was a great way to learn, even if I'm not remotely in the class of Fermi and Lee.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#53Chien-Shiung Wu, who conducted the experiment that proved Lee’s (and Yang’s) theory didn’t share the Nobel Prize with them in 1956. When I read people lamenting the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism I wonder why Wu is not mentioned. For more information on the circumstances see https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-sh...
> the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism The primary reason why Rosalind Franklin didn't get a Nobel is that she died in 1958. It's maybe not easy to speculate what would have happened in the alternate timeline where she had lived until the Nobel nominations started to happen.
The primary reason Franklin didn't get the Nobel is that she didn't contribute the key component of the discovery: that DNA is a double helix that is antiparallel.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#54Feynman wrote a exceptionally clear explanation of this experiment and what it meant: - "To illustrate the whole problem still more clearly, imagine that we were talking to a Martian, or someone very far away, by telephone. We are not allowed to send him any actual samples to inspect; for instance, if we could send light, we could send him right-hand circularly polarized light and say, “That is right-hand light—just…
“Try to teach an alien on a telephone about left and right” actually sounds like a fun game to try with a class full of kids. I would solve this particular circumstance by using the andromeda galaxy (“the closest galaxy”) as a reference, but it definitely stumped me for a bit.
The rest of the story about developing a way to communicate with the alien is a significant part of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, which is also a good book for kids.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the electrons actually move in the same direction always, just as a free falling object always moves towards the locally dominant mass. We could call the direction of electron movement "right".
It's the magnetic field that has the arbitrary sign convention. You can't determine the direction of a magnetic field from observations without using the right hand rule.
You don't have to know the sign, you could tell which way the electrons are going.
We tell the aliens: you take all sorts of organics with liquid inside (on earth we typically use a lemon, but other organics will do), and put a stake of element 29 in one side and a stake of element 30 in the other. You then connect them with a length of element 29. Keep trying different organics until you find one that works. They might not have lemons, but there is a good chance that something will eventually work.
You'd need to predefine what the atomic numbers mean and some other things, but we're already assuming some level of communication already being established so this aspect is not far-fetched.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the magnetic field that has the arbitrary sign convention. You can't determine the direction of a magnetic field from observations without using the right hand rule.
You don't have to know the sign, you could tell which way the electrons are going. We tell the aliens: you take all sorts of organics with liquid inside (on earth we typically use a lemon, but other organics will do), and put a stake of element 29 in one side and a stake of element 30 in the other. You then connect them with a length of element 29. Keep trying different organics until you find one that works. They mi…
Okay, I’ve got elements 29 and 30. Which side do I put each on?
See the problem? :)
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#57Chien-Shiung Wu, who conducted the experiment that proved Lee’s (and Yang’s) theory didn’t share the Nobel Prize with them in 1956. When I read people lamenting the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism I wonder why Wu is not mentioned. For more information on the circumstances see https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-sh...
I think part of it was there a number of subsequent experiments that would also confirmed Lee & Yang's prediction in short order.
My PhD advisor worked with Wu at Columbia. He held her in very high esteem.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the magnetic field that has the arbitrary sign convention. You can't determine the direction of a magnetic field from observations without using the right hand rule.
You don't have to know the sign, you could tell which way the electrons are going. We tell the aliens: you take all sorts of organics with liquid inside (on earth we typically use a lemon, but other organics will do), and put a stake of element 29 in one side and a stake of element 30 in the other. You then connect them with a length of element 29. Keep trying different organics until you find one that works. They mi…
Congrats, you devised an experiment to determine left and right. The only issue? You need to know what's left and right when placing those elements.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#59Chien-Shiung Wu, who conducted the experiment that proved Lee’s (and Yang’s) theory didn’t share the Nobel Prize with them in 1956. When I read people lamenting the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism I wonder why Wu is not mentioned. For more information on the circumstances see https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-sh...
> the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism The primary reason why Rosalind Franklin didn't get a Nobel is that she died in 1958. It's maybe not easy to speculate what would have happened in the alternate timeline where she had lived until the Nobel nominations started to happen.
In his memoir of their discovery, The Double Helix, James Watson suggests that, had Franklin not died due to cancer a few years after their ground-breaking research, she might have shared their Nobel. He further speculates that since her protege Aaron Klug later won the Nobel in chemistry for his X-ray crystallography work (techniques she introduced him to), it wouldn't be far-fetched to imagine her having been a double laureate.
Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to know the sign, you could tell which way the electrons are going. We tell the aliens: you take all sorts of organics with liquid inside (on earth we typically use a lemon, but other organics will do), and put a stake of element 29 in one side and a stake of element 30 in the other. You then connect them with a length of element 29. Keep trying different organics until you find one that works. They mi…
Okay, I’ve got elements 29 and 30. Which side do I put each on? See the problem? :)
No, it really doesn't matter. Have you never made a lemon or potato battery before?