The weekend from a Wednesday point of view.
On Saturday I went to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics to attend EnsteinFest.
It's the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "miracle year", in which, at the age of 26, he published five of his most important papers. (It's also the World Year of Physics. Endorsed by the UN, woo.) Clearly this is cause for an event that celebrates Einstein and physics and shows off a swanky new building. Paul and Hailly came with.
We saw:
My favourite part was the display about concepts in physics and various "theories of everything". The dude overseeing this display noticed that I was spending a long time there, so he gave me a quiz to fill out. I won an Albert Einstein temporary tattoo for getting enough correct answers. (I will add that this same tattoo would cost you one whole dollar at the souvenir booth. I bought a pen that says EinsteinFest on it.) What I was really trying to do was wrap my head around something called (I think) loop quantum gravity, which is a new-to-me theory of everything that tries to unify quantum theory with general relativity. It's blowing my mind. Anyhow, I shall have to research it, because the display didn't go into enough detail. It didn't go into enough detail on a lot of things, so I've had to lend Hailly a copy of Connie Willis's "At the Rialto" so she can have a somewhat proper explanation of Schrödinger and his cat.
They're having loads of free lectures about Einstein (his life and times - there's talks on literature and music that look really good) over the next three weeks. There's a bunch I'd like to go to, but realistically, I'll probably only make it to a couple (plus, some of them are on while I'm at work) so we've reserved tickets for only two of them: "Strange Views of Space and Time: From Einstein to String Theory" (my choice) and "Einstein's Political Priorities: World Government" (Paul's choice). I'm excited.
It's the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "miracle year", in which, at the age of 26, he published five of his most important papers. (It's also the World Year of Physics. Endorsed by the UN, woo.) Clearly this is cause for an event that celebrates Einstein and physics and shows off a swanky new building. Paul and Hailly came with.
We saw:
- a time line of Einstein's life and work (and other scientific and cultural happenings of the late 1800s/early 1900s.) (The funniest thing on the time line was a picture of Radon "as it appears on the Periodic Table". Not, you notice, a picture of its atomic structure or anything technical like that. It really was a picture of radon as it appears on the Periodic Table. This will never stop being funny.)
- artefacts from the early 20th century (the most interesting were a collection of moving picture projectors)
- a trippy video about powers of 10
- a dorky promotional video for the Perimeter Institute (Hailly and I were both disappointed that the video was about PI, not pi)
- scientific demonstrations (I didn't watch these because they were too crowded)
- a lot of the inside of the building, which is pretty neat. There's lots of wall-sized blackboards covered in mathematical calculations. Swoon.
- also, there's a neat reflecting pool out back
My favourite part was the display about concepts in physics and various "theories of everything". The dude overseeing this display noticed that I was spending a long time there, so he gave me a quiz to fill out. I won an Albert Einstein temporary tattoo for getting enough correct answers. (I will add that this same tattoo would cost you one whole dollar at the souvenir booth. I bought a pen that says EinsteinFest on it.) What I was really trying to do was wrap my head around something called (I think) loop quantum gravity, which is a new-to-me theory of everything that tries to unify quantum theory with general relativity. It's blowing my mind. Anyhow, I shall have to research it, because the display didn't go into enough detail. It didn't go into enough detail on a lot of things, so I've had to lend Hailly a copy of Connie Willis's "At the Rialto" so she can have a somewhat proper explanation of Schrödinger and his cat.
They're having loads of free lectures about Einstein (his life and times - there's talks on literature and music that look really good) over the next three weeks. There's a bunch I'd like to go to, but realistically, I'll probably only make it to a couple (plus, some of them are on while I'm at work) so we've reserved tickets for only two of them: "Strange Views of Space and Time: From Einstein to String Theory" (my choice) and "Einstein's Political Priorities: World Government" (Paul's choice). I'm excited.