"Too small to see, too big to imagine" - Saturday Physics Honors Program

Again this fall, physicists from the University of Illinois will take high school students and the general public on tours of physical phenomena that are too small to see (single atoms and single cells) and too big to imagine (the expanding universe).

Now in its 17th year, the Saturday Physics Honors Program introduces the

community to world-class scientists, who talk about groundbreaking research in a relaxed, interactive setting. Although designed primarily for high-school students, the free program is open to the public.

“This is a great chance to interact with renowned scientific leaders in the research community,” explains Inga Karliner, one of the program’s directors. “The speakers include both young faculty and senior researchers—their common ground is their curiosity, their zest for science, and their ability to communicate with nonspecialists.”

The Fall 2009 program kicks off on September 19 with National Academy of Sciences member Dale J. Van Harlingen, who will talk about superconductivity, one of the most remarkable and potentially useful physical phenomena ever discovered—the ability of some materials to carry electric current without any loss of energy by heating. Although superconductivity was first observed almost 100 years ago, scientists are still unraveling its mechanisms in several new classes of “exotic” superconductors that offer tremendous promise to revolutionize energy transmission, secure communication, medical imaging, and quantum computing.

In his talk, Professor Van Harlingen, who currently heads the Department of Physics at Illinois, will describe his quest to characterize the extraordinary and puzzling properties of these new superconductors and “zoom in” to the quantum world that holds the key to understanding and exploiting them. A free-ranging question-and-answer session will be held after each lecture.  

Other speakers this year are Ido Golding, “Decision Making in Living Cells” (Oct. 3); Brian Fields, “The Dark Side of the Universe: Shadow Matter and Antigravity” (Oct. 17); Alfred Hubler, “Understanding Complex Systems” (Oct. 31); Benjamin Lev, “The Atom Chip” (Nov. 14); and Samir Sayegh, “From Blindness to Sight: The Physics of Vision Restoration” (Dec. 5).

The talks will be held in Room 141, Loomis Laboratory of Physics (1110 West Green Street, Urbana) on the University of Illinois campus, beginning at 10:15 a.m. Free parking is available on Saturday mornings on the east side of the building in Lot B21.

For maps to Loomis, parking directions, and abstracts of the talks, go to http://physics.illinois.edu/outreach/Honors.

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Contact: Toni Pitts, Department of Physics, 217/244-2948.
Writer: Celia Elliott, Department of Physics, 217/244-7725.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.