Condensed concepts

Over the past decade, I have noticed a disturbing trend in Australian universities: postdocs are now often expected to be like junior faculty. Specifically, they are expected to apply for grants, recruit and supervise Ph.D. students, be involved in public outreach, help with teaching, engage with industry, ... This is quite different from the traditional role of a postdoc: purely to do research and not worry about money, teaching, and admin. I don't think anyone is winning from this change. First, it is creating a lot more stress and anxiety for the postdocs. Second, their research productivity and quality are lower because they are distracted and spending significant time not doing research. Thus, the funding agency that is actually supporting them to do research is getting less for their money. I think this change has been caused by several factors. First, the job market for tenure-track positions has got even more competitive (from extreme to ridiculous) and so there is a h

I am trying to get some momentum in writing A Very Short Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics. The intended audience is the intellectually curious person with little background in science. My goal is to convince them that CMP is important and interesting. I can think of several reasons. 1. CMP is intimately connected with everyday technology ranging from liquid crystal displays to computer chips. 2. CMP comprises the majority of physics (employees, papers, conferences, ...) and has significant interaction with areas of science and engineering. 3. CMP is a rich source of creative ideas, concepts, and techniques that represent a significant intellectual achievement and are relevant to many other intellectual endeavors. 4. CMP is full of surprises. We keep discovering new unanticipated phases of matter. 5. CMP presents significant scientific challenges: theoretical, computational, and experimental (from characterisation to sample synthesis). I am going to focus on 3. However

An important step in understanding any class of complex materials is to find/discover the simplest possible effective Hamiltonian that can be used to describe the main properties of interest (e.g. a phase diagram). Doing this well is a non-trivial and subjective process. I am thinking about this because I am currently trying to figure out the appropriate Hamiltonian for spin-crossover compounds. Here are some key elements of the process.  "Simplest possible" means having the fewest possible degrees of freedom and parameters. 1. What are the key degrees of freedom (molecular orbitals, vibrations, spins, ...)? 2. What are the key interactions and the associated Hamiltonian? 3. What approximation scheme can be used to calculate properties of the many-body Hamiltonian (ground state, thermodynamics, electronic, magnetic, ...)? 4. How do the calculated properties compare to experiment? 5. Can we estimate the values of the Hamiltonian parameters from the compari

Today there are many threats to science playing an appropriate role in education, public policy, and general public discourse. Some include anti-vaccination campaigns, climate change denial, young earth creationism, "health" products, ... In the Western world issues such as these rightly get considerable attention. However, in the Majority World there is an issue that does considerable harm and is growing significantly. The basic claims are along the following lines. Modern science did not first arise in Europe but was already present in ancient cultures, often in religious texts. Post-colonial nations need to be proud of this heritage and this "science" should be an integral part of science education. Nations need to embrace their own methods and epistemologies consistent with their culture. I recently become aware of just how prevalent these views are and the powerful political forces promoting them. You can get some of the flavour from this recent newspaper ar

An interesting feature of spin-crossover compounds is that the transition from low-spin to high-spin with increasing temperature is usually a first-order phase transition. This is associated with hysteresis and the temperature range of the hysteresis varies significantly between compounds. If there was no interaction between the transition metal ions the transition would be a smooth crossover. This is nicely illustrated in a figure taken from the paper below. Abrupt versus Gradual Spin-Crossover in FeII(phen)2(NCS)2 and FeIII(dedtc)3 Compared by X-ray Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy and Quantum-Chemical Calculations  Stefan Mebs, Beatrice Braun, Ramona Kositzki, Christian Limberg, and Michael Haumann For the first compound, the transition is abrupt [much earlier work found a narrow hysteresis region of about 0.15 K]. For the second compound, the transition is a crossover. The authors fit their data to an empirical equation that has a parameter n, describing the &q

I keep coming back to the basic claim that the key ingredient of education is learning to think in particular ways. [n.b. In science, I am not at all playing up theory over experiment. You have to learn to think about what experiment to do and how to think about your results.]. In the past year, several people brought to my attention that MIT recently reviewed their engineering curricula . It is interesting that a key element is to teach students 11 ways of thinking.  The list is worth reading and contemplating. I have two minor comments. Although I affirm this as an admirable goal. I think the list is incredibly ambitious (even for MIT students) both in scope and content. But, maybe that is a good thing. What do you think? One of the 11 ways is Systems Thinking Predicting emergence of the whole by examining inter-related entities in context, in the face of complexity and ambiguity, for homogeneous systems and systems that integrate multiple technologies. Again, I love it. B