Fall 2011

10/01/2011 | Life is Physical -- Tim McKay (U-M Physics)

The divide between living and not has long seemed unbridgeable, enshrined in disciplinary distinctions between the physical and life sciences. These boundaries are gone – it is now clear that life is a set of remarkable physical processes, not a separate domain of science subject to unique rules. This realization changes the way we teach physics to students interested in studying life. In this talk, I will give examples of how we help students to recognize the essential role physics plays in understanding life and its diversity.

10/08/2011 | Ecological Complexity and Pest Control -- John Vanndermeer (U-M Ecology & Evolutionary Biology)

This talk will explain how new understanding of ecosystem dynamics can aid in understanding how agricultural systems can be organized so as to better control potential pest species. The example of coffee production in southern Mexico will be used as a running example.

10/15/2011 | Cosmology with the Cosmic Microwave Background -- Jeffrey McMahon (U-M Physics)

The `Big Bang' model posits that our universe expanded and cooled from a hotter more dense state in the past. This model is now amply supported by data from a variety of observations, yet a number of questions remain. What were the initial conditions for the state of our universe at the 'beginning' of this expansion? What is in our universe at present and how does it influence the expansion? We have models (called inflation and dark energy, respectively) that seem to answer these questions. In both cases many of the details of these models remain uncertain. New measurements are needed to confirm these models and illuminate the details. In this talk, Professor McMahon will provide an overview of the state of our understanding of the universe and describe new instruments (in the South Pole and Chile) that will make improved measurements of the radiation left over from the Big Bang (called the cosmic microwave background) to help answer these questions.

10/22/2011 | The Other Side of Physics; What Can You Do With It? -- Tom Haddock (Translume, Inc.)

The technologies developed in research labs throughout the university often have great potential commercial value. While this is often true, the pitfalls in the path to commercial success are diverse and mostly non-technical. Dr. Haddock, who has used the knowledge from his UM physics Ph.D. to commercialize technology in tech startup companies, many with technology spun out from UM, will describe the commercialization process for a wide range of applications.

11/05/2011 | Solar, Wind, Biofules, and Nuclear Energy: How Much? How Soon? How Effective? At What Cost? -- Frank Shu (UC San Diego)

As replacements for the continued burning of fossil fuels, solar photovoltaics, wind, biofuels, and nuclear energy are civilization's main hopes for staving off the worst effects of climate change. What does basic physics teach us about the reality of these expectations?

Part 2 here

11/12/2011 | New Approaches to Energy Harvesting and Storage -- Theodore Goodson III (U-M Chemistry)

As the need for enhanced energy harvesting and storage capabilities increases, the design of real and new devices to be used in the energy-storage market remains a major focus of developing technologies. With further advancements in materials, it has been shown that novel organic macromolecules are very promising for a broad variety of optical and electronic applications related to energy storage. New trends in the use of organic materials for energy harvesting and storage will be described in this presentation.

11/19/2011 | Predicting the Maelstrom: The Physics of the Ocean -- Brian Arbic (UM Earth & Environmental Sciences and AOSS)

Professor Arbic will discuss the physics of oceanic motions, the methods of predicting these motions in numerical models, and extrapolate these applications of ocean models to problems of societal interest.

12/03/2011 | Science of a Trillion Transistors -- Divakar Viswanath (U-M Mathematics)

Processor packages sold today by companies such as AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA have more than a billion transistors. Thousands of these are connected by fast networks on many computer systems. Professor Viswanath will describe the configuration of such computer systems from the transistor up followed by the sort of scientific problems they can and cannot solve.