Physics X


Physics X
Fall 2019

The Facts:

  • Meetings: Gonna be determined

Description:

    This is renegade, this is anarchy, this is Physics X. No, we are not trying to emulate Feynman's famous freshman free-for-all from CalTech (go read about it if you are curious). Here we are out to tackle X topics chosen by the students. We are gonna talk about the stuff that doesn't come up much, if at all in the typical physics curriculum. Some topics we will cover in one meeting, though it is likely that some will stretch out into at least two. Anyone is welcome to attend, though regular attendance is encouraged since I will hopefully be able to connect concepts from various discussions. There are no pre-requisites, but to keep things interesting I will start at zero and usually get to about 60 by the end of the hour. In the past these have been enjoyed by folks ranging from freshman to graduate students.

Topics we are aiming* to cover this fall include:

TBD
*Our aim is pretty good, but sometimes we find reasons to change it up a bit. Weekly announcements will however be accurate.

Meetings for Spring 2019:

  • Meeting 1/14: SUSY/SUGRA with an eye towards Extended SUSY Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 1/28: Extended SUSY Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 2/4: Complex Geometry (Towards Calabi-Yaus) Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 2/11: Calabi-Yaus Continued Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 2/25: Fiber Bundles Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 3/4: Calabi-Yaus Finished Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 3/11: String Consistency Conditions (A Prelude to Orbifolds) Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 3/18: Orbifolds Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 4/22: Emergent Gauge Theories (Guest Lecture from my Senior Design Students)Their Paper Covering these Results Lecture Video
  • Meeting 4/29: Last X of the Semester!

    Meetings from Fall 2018:

  • Meeting 8/28: The Storm of Brains This was our organizational meeting during which we brainstormed over a list of possible topics to cover and then whittled down (by secret ballot) to exactly X.
  • Meeting 9/11: Differential Forms Review Part 1 Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 9/18: Differential Forms Review Part 2 and Path Integrals Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 10/30 Topological Field Theories Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 11/7 GUTs Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 11/14 TOEs Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 11/27 Strings Part One My pen broke, so no notes at the moment. Lecture Video
  • Meeting 12/04 Strings Part Two My pen is still broke. Lecture Video

    Meetings from the inaugural Spring 2018 version of Physics X:

  • Meeting 1/26: Action Principles I (Fermat, Einstein and well...more Einstein) Meeting Notes
  • Meeting 1/26: Action Principles II (Path Integrals) Meeting Notes
  • Meeting 2/9: Higher Dimensional Physics Meeting Notes
  • Meeting 2/16: D-branes
  • Meeting 2/23: Differential Forms Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 3/2: Topology, Differential Forms and Cohomology Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 3/9: SUSY Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 3/16: Another one bites the dust...The Black Hole Information Paradox, a Tribute to Stephen Hawking Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 4/6: You were all invited to Zach's thesis defense... I hope you went!
  • Meeting 4/12: The E-Days Dislocation - Baryon Asymmetry and Monsters Take Over my Particle Physics Class Lecture Video
  • Meeting 4/20: The Black Hole Information Paradox Continued (All About Entropy) Meeting Notes Lecture Video
  • Meeting 4/27: The Black Hole Information Paradox In Its Modern Form Meeting Notes Lecture Video

    Send comments & questions to aflourno@mines.edu Disclaimer