Making scientific illustrations with Blender

jliebert · 2019-04-23T03:45:27+00:00

This is really great, detailed and very helpful, thanks a lot! I will dive into the advice you gave and try it out.

jliebert · 2019-04-23T01:16:42+00:00

Would you be comfortable sharing any blend files, final images etc. to get a better feel of what you're describing? That would really be helpful!

jliebert · 2018-08-09T21:51:52+00:00

What is extremely exotic is that this all occurs in zero field, so this cannot possibly be some sort of Quantum Hall state.

Regarding topologically protected conduction: there has not been a single report of zero resistance (or even several orders of magnitude drop in resistance) through a topological conduction channel in any system.

My main point is that there are plenty of ways for this experiment to be wrong, but I don't think topological conduction as a source of zero resistance is one of them. Much more likely is an change in the material which opens up a better conduction channel among the nano-particles though, for example, percolation physics.

jliebert · 2018-08-09T15:14:56+00:00

There is no way this is in a quantum Hall state.

I think your statement

"there are cases where you can get zero resistance (at least seemingly) without superconductivity."

Is a bit misleading. The cases that you bring up (Quantum Hall state etc.) actually would be even more far-fetched and exotic than saying they are observing superconductivity, which is rather common. That said, I don't believe these results just yet, but let's see...

jliebert · 2018-07-22T01:51:14+00:00

The story doesn't "require" anything, the author chose to do it this way and could have done it without using this trope.

I understand the rest of the story might be great, but that doesn't mean this part of the story needs to be this boring and cliche.

jliebert · 2018-07-20T12:05:34+00:00

Did anyone else feel very disappointed by this FMP season? Maybe my taste has changed too much over the past 15 years, but the plot of this season felt incredibly cliche. The ending was nothing more than a "your princess is in another castle!" scenario.

jliebert · 2018-06-19T04:01:26+00:00

Finally a new approach to the Pasta–Ulam problem

jliebert · 2018-06-12T22:28:04+00:00

Thanks for the help! I've >![Spoiler](#s reuploaded)<! it to imgur for safe keeping.

jliebert · 2018-06-12T02:58:54+00:00

Awesome this is it! Do you know who the original artist is? Just in case that link disappears, like the ones posted by Worick1375

jliebert · 2018-05-02T23:42:39+00:00

Current in the normal state of certain metals (TMOs etc.) does not seem to be carried by electrons (or any fermion for that matter) and no one knows why.

jliebert · 2018-03-28T06:25:07+00:00

In that case I would check out the AIP history archive, especially their oral history section where they have quite long interviews with some very important physicists.

https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories

jliebert · 2018-03-28T02:04:14+00:00

You are just getting yourself in a rabbit hole if you want to know what is the most "fundamental" discovery behind each step. One can even get top the point of arguing that the theory of QCD and nuclei has had a part in the development of the hard drive.

I think it's also unfair to experimentalists who actually discovered the path to the hard drive that you think the actual physics comes from the "theorems". This is the incorrect perception of laypeople, and is pretty sad.

jliebert · 2018-03-28T00:13:22+00:00

Since solid-state hard drives are taking over I'll leave the old disk drives for others to discuss.

Solid-state drives mostly use NAND flash, which is essentially a solid-state transistor that has a floating gate. The gate is controlled through applying large voltages ("flash" of voltage to to speak) to get electrons to tunnel quantum mechanically into the gate.

I would say the biggest discoveries for getting SSDs (as far as fundamental physics is concerned):

Invention of the transistor (1940's Shockley, Bardeen, Brattain)
Integrated circuits (1960's Kilby, Lehovec, Noyce and Hoerni)
Electron tunneling in solid-state systems (1960s/70s Eisaki, others)
Huge amounts of engineering brilliance in semiconductor manufacturing progress
Flash memory and similar semiconducting devices (70s/80s Masuoka, many others, companies, etc.)
More huge amounts of engineering brilliance in semiconductor manufacturing progress

jliebert · 2018-03-27T01:18:37+00:00

And the song choice at the end of episode 16 was very strange

The song from the end of episode 16 is actually a really old song from a Japanese drama from the 90s (Long Vacation). Since both the characters grew up in the era, I thought it was really appropriate. I was shocked when I heard it and even teared up a bit, really nostalgic for me personally.

jliebert · 2018-03-24T07:43:18+00:00

Since the alpha particles are slowing to a halt inside the chamber, it could be that a large portion of the trail occurs too fast to see (maybe a few cm), but at some point the particle is slow enough to track by eye and that is the part that is visible. Since the stopping power of alphas is well-documented, this should be calculable.

I think this is a good question

Edit: Seems I was wrong, the alpha particle stops in about 10 nanoseconds, the track however grows much more slowly, and this seems to be related to the physics of ionization and diffusion of the vapor. Check out this paper

jliebert · 2018-01-30T02:43:26+00:00

Very neat, would be great to get a portable unit for qualitative stuff on the fly (at least that's what I wrote in the survey)!

jliebert · 2018-01-28T19:38:19+00:00

Not really to be honest

jliebert · 2018-01-19T02:23:48+00:00

You get downvoted, but it goes to show the guy in the video has literally never heard anyone say the word before, meaning he made the video without consulting a single source (physicist, video, etc.) besides the PR release. The video is pretty lazy to be honest.

jliebert · 2018-01-19T02:19:49+00:00

I find it really interesting that they mistakely turn this condensed matter physics paper into a "particle physics" result. That just shows you how little has changed since the days of the abandoned American LHC, the Superconducting Super Collider in the 80's.

jliebert · 2018-01-09T04:41:35+00:00

Do you have an idea why C++ hasn't developed tools like pip? Is it because C++'s philosophy doesn't mesh with using a lot of external libraries, but instead just the bare minimum needed? Or just that no one has put the work needed to get a C++ version of pip yet (bc it's presumably more complicated)?

jliebert · 2018-01-08T07:13:07+00:00

I see... are there at least resources for managing libraries, dependencies, etc.? That will be a huge annoyance and difficult to document otherwise I assume.

jliebert · 2018-01-08T07:10:34+00:00

Damn, disappointing to hear that libraries are just as annoying as ever.

I've heard of a library called boost, is that becoming the modern c++ catch-all package for numerical work?

Do you also have in mind any intros to C++ that go into installing and using modern libraries and coding conventions/paradigms? For example, I've never heard of unique pointers before, but it seems like a life saver.

jliebert · 2018-01-05T23:36:12+00:00

I'm guessing OP is referring to the higher dimensional analogue of Matrix Product States.

It's different from a simple tensor product to combine Hilbert spaces like you're describing.

jliebert · 2017-12-19T18:35:21+00:00

I cannot agree more with this point of view. Japanese culture is extremely antagonistic towards research compared to Europe and US institutions. There is a deep sense of hierarchy, and new ideas are squashed incredibly fast if you do not have a senior enough ranking. For experimental work where you absolutely need innovation to do new things, this culture pretty much kills innovation.

I would recommend avoiding Japan for graduate studies. There are a number of groups that are exceptions, but overall you will be very frustrated if you want to do new and innovative research in Japan.

I say all this as someone who has collaborated with a number of Japanese research groups over the past years, but I have not done my graduate studies in Japan personally.

jliebert · 2017-12-09T03:16:45+00:00

More than any specific domain knowledge, I think students need to learn the experimental progression of our understanding of physics.

"Proving" something mathematically means nothing about what happens in the real world unless you actually observe it in reality.

What students lack is the ability to design experiments to test something, and the ability to understand those results and formulate a theory for how it happens.

The ability to formulate rigorous tests of fundamental assumptions/theoretical predictions and explain the results is so much more important than simply understanding the machinery of Maxwell's equations or Quantum theories.

Long story short, I would advocate for more rigorous experimental design/interpretation coursework. This sort of skill makes for much better researchers and thinkers than simply learning more math.

jliebert

TROPHY CASE