2013-11-22

The adventures of the little physicists part II - the secret lecture notes

Photofit picture of the observed suspects.
Image drawn by an anonymous genius.
Ok this is a slightly crazy blogpost. Just to warn you in advance. ;) It represents the mood of one of the last lectures and especially shows the dangers of mentally cracking when you study physics - dangerous game! So here we go ...

Yeees sometimes even the most interested physicists have a hard time to follow the lectures. As someone very precisely described some lectures are just too "slidy". This means: Too many slides, too confusing slides, too little information ... This again causes the listeners to slide to sleep if they cannot hold their concentration high by some other means. So some very promising plans might be forged in the mean time ... Some of the more delicate ones are published exclusively by the physics secret service at this very point!

This is an image of the battle plan recorded first. The targets and the obstacles (lab report) are identified and the first relations developed. Note the slight confusion about whom to deal with and about the priorities. (The coffee machine was an especially hot target as it provides free coffee - would have been a bad idea to steal a coffee machine where you have to pay for your own coffee, of course!)


One after the other the targets are sorted out and concrete deals are sealed. Connections between different strings are established and the bar is set higher! (With a little preparation this might even work. Subject of the lecture were different microscopes. With a little fantasy they look just like catapults and lasers and sh*t. Actually they do have lasers in them!
As well as the lasers note the brilliant idea to trade sambuca with the Russians - nobody would ever guess the connection between sambuca and Russia - no way to trace it back!)


Nevertheless you should never leave a lecture without having learned something so at the end the following conclusion was made:


(STM means Scanning Tunneling Micrsocope - closely connected to the laser gun! Thus: Do not mess with it.)

2013-11-21

The adventures of the little physicists

Looong time ago there was a physicist writing a blog. Then he got occupied with loads of stuff and experiencing adventures at university. Now before the next exam he takes a break and tells some of the maybe funny adventures. ;)

(c) Homepage CERN
One day four little physicists gathered in the basement of the chemistry building to look at some funny images produced by a million dollar scanning electron microscope. After two hours of carefully observing stuff you usually cannot observe (too small ...) in dim light in a small room with insanely expensive and complicated scientist toys they packed their bags and started the long journey home. Soon they encountered a mysterious crossing where their only thought was "I have no memory of this place!". After some considerations (of course including serious looks to all of the exits) and calculating the crystal orientation of the building they decided to follow the 0 -1 0 direction, meaning "minus x" in a right handed coordinate system and "left" in a language that not-crazy people speak. So the four little physicists entered an ominous corridor that started to seem familiar after some meters. But behold! It was on level too low, the corridor leading back to daylight was one level up! The physicists returned, trying to correct their mistake but - oh dear! - the door was locked. The same door they just had passed! Great confusion. This had to be an asymmetric potential barrier! (Physicists hate asymmetries.) After dealing with the first shock knowing something about tubes and particle currents the physicists quickly decided that if they moved towards the other end of the corridor-tube there should be an exit as well! Only - oh dear again! - this door was locked as well! After laughing their a**es off the four little physicists decided to accept their fate as bound state in a finite quantum well (locked corridor) and waited for someone to lower the energy barrier (door) to free them and transform them back to plane waves in free space ...

A few days later there was a second lab exercise, this time looking at even funnier images of a transmission electron microscope - bigger microscope (actually it filled a whole room), way more expensive microscope, smaller images ... Same building, same basement ... Ok, this time the physicists were prepared, having used a mapping function to remeber the way ... ;)

(Just by the end: Seriously, who builds corridors where you can get but not out?!?)

2013-11-11

Skål för alla vikingar som kom hit!

A little cultural exchange on a Monday evening: A tradition at the sittnings here in Sweden (formal to semi-formal dinners organised by the nations) is singing! As I have been to a few Tackfests (thank you sittnings for working) now I want to share my favourite song so far. I do not know if it is my favourite song because it is the one I can sing loudest (since it is the only one where I know the melody :x :D ) or if it is because I really like the melody but anyways, here it is! The melody is the one of "When Johnny comes marching home" so you might sing along while reading the text. ;)


Vikingen

En viking vill ha livets vann, hurra, hurra!
Den hastigt i mitt svalg försvann, hurra, hurra!
Till kalv, till oxe, till fisk, till fläsk,
När kärringar bara dricker läsk,
Då vill alla sanna vikingar ha en bäsk.

När vi har druckit bäsken slut, tragik, tragik,
Då bäres varje viking ut som lik, sig lik,
Och sen om vi vaknar vi sjunger en bit,
Sen korkar vi upp Skånes Akvavit.
SKÅL för alla vikingar som kom hit.


A viking wants to have the water of live, hurray, hurray!
Which quickly disappeared in my throat, hurray, hurray!
To calf, to ox, to fish, to pork.
When witches only drink soda (or any not alcoholic drink)
Then all true vikings want to have a bäsk. (a kind of snaps)

When we drank all of the bäsk, tragical, tragical
Then all vikings are carried out like corpses, like corpses,
And then when we wake up we sing a little
Then we open Skånes Akvavit (SNAPS!! flavoured with anis, I think)
CHEERS to all vikings that came here!


Someone told me that every now and then new songs are composed and presented at an event for this exact and only purpose but I have to admit that I do not remember if this still happens or if this happened in earlier times. It would be a great thing though if it still happened!

For those who do not remember the melody here is a nice version of it: (Music first, singing afterwards.)

2013-11-08

The Physics Pub and the Popcorn Quantum

Figure 1: Some fine Whiskey ...
In the Fysicum - the physics building - here in Lund there is a pub on Wednesdays. Cool enough already! Even better: They have a great variety of beer and Whiskey! Even even better: The prices are very low! As I could not make it to the pub last week as I was working we went there again this week. And as always if many physicists come together in one place someone came up with a ... good! idea. From the popcorn we ordered there was some corn left. And there were tealights on the table. What a shame to waste the corn! (Although it tastes quite good as corn as well.) So someone build a device to make tealight popcorn! (See figure 2.) Basic principle of operation: Put corn into spoon - put spoon over flame - wait. But as always when introducing new experimental techniques the first run failed: The spoon crashed into the light and suffocated the flame. Too bad! So a supportive spoon was installed to prevent this. (This is the version visible in figure 2.)
Figure 2: Original quantum popcorn experiment setup.
Next and most important ingredient for any first time experiment: patience! So we waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and nothing happened. After some time of alternatingly staring into the flame and into our glasses one of the experimenters came up with the great idea: Liquid! (Probably he/she stared more into his/her glass than into the flame - "In cervisia idea" - freely after "In vino veritas" ... ;) ) So we took the next best liquid available and poured beer into the spoon. :D And waited ... well, same as above ... The master chef in our group then suggested "oil" after a while. So someone sneaked into the kitchen and organised some butter which we forwarded into the (new) spoon. More waiting. Then suddenly: POOF!! A wild popcorn appeared! It worked! Universal amazement all over the place! After carefully examining the product of the experiment one of the experimenters even sacrificed himself to taste-test the result.
Figure 3: One quantum of popcorn -
created in the Physics Pub in Lund.
As there is only salty butter in Sweden the popcorn tasted exactly like (salty) popcorn is supposed to taste! After a quick calculation of the density of popcorn states we concluded unanimously that we produced one quantum (the lowest possible unit in case of quantised states or expressed differently: the smallest amount of something) of popcorn! A real success! Now mankind is not only capable of producing continuous spectra of popcorn in an industrially optimised way (cooking pot) but also to investigate the properties of low-dimensional popcorn structures. The last two month of studying seem to finally pay off!




(Sorry for the slight misplacement of the images, I did not have the nerve to dig in the auto generated html code to optimise the image placing ...)

2013-11-04

The Battle of Lund

1676 - They called it the Battle of Lund when the Swedish king Charles XI with 8.000 men defeated the invading Danish king Christian V with his 12.000 men near Lund in one of the most brutal battles ever fought on Skandinavian ground.

They called it the Battle of Lund until today because today a battle was fought of unprecedented levels so far in the basement of the international desk in Lund. RISK - destroyer of friendships, sower of hatred and cause of absurd brutality: The yellow, seeking to govern the whole Asian continent, the red, seeking to destroy the yellow, the green, seeking to destroy the red, the blue, seeking to destroy the green and finally the glorious black, conquering all North America and Australia after starting from a hopeless outpost in Africa destroying the green and thus favouring a blue victory by targets passing by.

At the beginning everything looked already decided from the start: The red spread out over all South America and Africa - until the green almost blew them off the map in one big campaign spreading fear and loathing changing the tides. Only the black hesitating to finish the red off in their hopeless situation spared the other peoples from world domination by the green ... At the same time yellow scratching at the edge of total Asian domination only being denied one country fiercly defended by the black and the blue fighting back from the south after almost being destroyed causing grim battles full of bravery and heroism. Waiting for the right moment like a spider in its net and slowly acquiring Noth America piece by piece the black's time then came and in two determined moves devastating the Asian east coast Australia could be won as last puzzle stone in the big picture.

So the second Battle of Lund changed the course of world history on that one rainy November day ... Only all friendships are still intact and five students are one step closer to world domination having sharpened their strategic skills ready to step outside the molding warmth of university ...

2013-11-03

Physicists on Halloween

What do you do when you plan to go to a Halloween party and you do not have a costume? (Well a costume was optional but it is way funnier to contribute to the overall confusion of appearance. ;) ) The course of events that we followed on the day of the party a few days ago was about this:
  • Decide that you need a costume.
  • Think hard about it and come up with a lot of crazy ideas all of which are not feasable within two hours of remaining time. ("make a transistor out of three people" (oh those physicists ...), "dress as lecture" (yes, >lecture<), ...)
  • Lower your standards. ("Just pin a sheet of paper to your chest and write cloak of invisibility on it.")
  • Start singing Thrift Shop in the physics exercise because you run out of ideas but want to keep the good mood.
  • Drive around in town confused looking for a cheap last-minute costume. (Did not work, incredibly expensive - everything!)
  • Remember some crazy as bonkers black metal bands and their face paint.
  • Buy some black and white makeup and find a girl who can apply it. (Thanks, Sarah! :) )
  • Hope that it does not start to rain.
  • Rock the party! :D
Overall, I think the result was quite awesome given the scarce resources thanks to our makeup specialist. :)