Winter 2015

2/7/2015 | Accretion Power in Astrophysics: Gravity Goes to Work -- Jon Miller (U-M Astronomy)

Accretion power pervades astrophysics. It governs the assembly of stars, the formation of planets, the evolution of black holes, and even affects the very largest structures in the universe. At its core, accretion is an elegant interplay of gravitation and electromagnetism, ultimately producing fantastic power. This talk will describe the basics of accretion and provide examples of how scientists study this process using new telescopes and techniques.

2/14/2015 | Surfing the Universe -- Lydia Bieri (U-M Mathematics)

Gravitational waves travel the Universe. In 1915, Albert Einstein developed the General Theory of Relativity unifying space, time and gravitation into a curved spacetime. It is gravitation that `curves' the world. We will explore what happens when a gravitational wave packet passes. The Universe even `remembers' the passage of such a wave train. The latter is like a footprint left in the spacetime. There are experiments going on and planned for the future that aim at detecting these gravitational waves, which are predicted by the General Theory of Relativity.

2/21/2015 | Hail to the Data: What We're Learning from Learning Analytics -- Timothy McKay (U-M Physics)

At the University of Michigan today, many interactions among teachers and students are mediated by technology. Students use clickers in class, do homework online, write and revise papers and project in the cloud, and produce video of presentations. This 'digital exhaust' gives us unprecedented opportunities to understand teaching and learning and improve student success. A new field of Learning Analytics is emerging to take advantage of this opportunity. Professor Timothy McKay’s presentation will introduce this topic using examples from a variety of local projects.

3/14/2015 | Model Thinking: One to Many and Many to One -- Scott Page (U-M Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics)

To make sense of our complex world, scientists use models and do so in novel inventive ways. Professor Page's MOOC Model Thinking has attracted over a half a million students who have learned how to use models to explain everything from why we cannot predict stock prices to why elephants don't explode.

3/21/2015 | Living Large: The Paleobiology Diplodocus and Other Long-Necked Dinosaurs -- Jeffrey Wilson (U-M Museum of Paleontology, U-M Earth & Environmental Sciences)

Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest animals ever to walk on land. Despite their extreme body size, these long-necked dinosaurs achieved broad geographic distribution and diversified throughout much of the dinosaur era. What adaptations in their skeleton and soft tissues allowed them to escape some of the physical constraints imposed by large body size?

3/28/2015 | The Secret Lives of Fluids -- David Goluskin (U-M Complex Systems & Mathematics)

The air and water around us are continually moving in extremely complicated ways. Such motion is often invisible to us, though we can glimpse it in the billow of a smokestack or the surface of a rushing river. This lecture will explore what these hidden motions look like and why they make it so hard to predict even basic quantities in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and interior.

4/11/2015 | Topology and Electrons in Solids -- Lu Li (U-M Physics)

Special topology in electronic structures leads to unconventional solid state materials. One example is a topological insulator with the insulating bulk and conductive surfaces. We will discuss how electrons move together to shake samples periodically under external magnetic fields.

4/18/2015 | Dark Energy, Alchemy, and Quantum Teleportation -- James Antonaglia (U-M Physics), Adam Katcher (U-M Physics), and Jessica Muir (U-M Physics)

Jessie Muir - Recent years have seen great advances in our knowledge of the universe on large scales, including the recognition that about 95% of it is made up of dark matter and dark energy. Jessie Muir will introduce the cosmic microwave background as one of the primary sources of this new knowledge, discussing how we use it to learn about the content and history of the universe.

Jim Antonaglia - Scientists and engineers over the last few decades have been able to mass-produce custom particles with virtually any kind of shape. Jim Antonaglia will discuss ways we can control how these new kinds of particles interact with each other that offer an exciting new approach to create materials that build and heal themselves.

Adam Katcher - The fantasy of instantly transporting people and objects across vast distances has always captured the human imagination. Adam Katcher will discuss the extent to which this idea has been applied in experiments demonstrating “quantum teleportation” with single atoms and particles.