Random 3am Thoughts

I typed this up pretty late last night, but I guess I never hit ‘post’. So…

• I just finished a 20-page lab report on using the Mössbauer effect to study the isomer shift and hyperfine splitting of ⁵⁷Fe, and I must say, it’s an incredible experiment. You move a thin foil of isotopically-enriched absorber (e.g. stainless steel/Fe metal) at extremely, extremely non-relativistic speeds of several millimeters per second relative to a ⁵⁷Co source. You record the number of 14.4keV gamma-rays detected. You analyze the heck out of your data. And somewhere along the way, somehow, you figure out how to deduce the magnitude of these splittings (sometimes as small as ~10^-9eV), among other things, from this mess of data. It works like magic, and apparently other people think so too (with applications from testing GR to looking at car exhaust/hemoglobin to the Mars Rover).

• Speaking of physics lab, I’ve just realized something: although classes, talks, homework, et cetera are fun (for very broad definitions of fun in some cases), I find that I’m happiest either when I’m actually doing an experiment, or trying to dissect my data. There’s this thrill involved with trying to learn something new about a system by playing with it, probing it, trying to force it to reveal its secrets in a systematic and careful manner; and either actually learning something new about it, or more commonly finding out why your approach is flawed. But debugging an experiment or trying to find a nugget of signal in a sea of noise can be fun, too. It’s like being a detective (cliché, I know, but it’s true). I really love experimental science, and I’m lucky because all of the experiments I get to do for this modern physics lab class are really beautiful. I’ve learned a ton from this class - and not just physics, too, but things like statistics, or more methodological things like really thinking things through and being careful and systematic. Which is perhaps why this post (via Chad Orzel) pissed me off, although I have better things to do than rant about it.

• And speaking of things of a curricular nature, I really, really hate in-class midterms for upper-level classes (the ones that you actually have to think deeply about). It just doesn’t make sense to compress the thought process involved in solving problem sets (an intense process of deep thought, trial, error, et cetera spread out over a week) into an hour-long block, and I find that when faced with such a situation, I’m so scared of screwing up that, well, I screw up. If I were in charge, I’d give really, really hard take-home midterms, or something of that sort, I think.

• I recently ordered a poster-size version of the ‘map of science’ (from here for $10), featured in Nature several months ago. I’ve always had the desire to map out the sciences, particularly the ones I’m interested in. It always struck me as a kid how throughout the history of science, hot new fields always seemed to emerge by drawing connections between fields that otherwise hadn’t been connected, and if you had a map of it all, identifying places to draw new connections would be a breeze. I’m not sure if I think quite so simplistically anymore, but I still agree with the general philosophy to a certain extent. That being said, the people who constructed this ‘map’ of science did a lot of work, and it shows: the only way to actually read the thing is by squinting.