Ruminations on emergent phenomena in condensed phases of matter
Introducing phase transitions to a layperson
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I have written a first draft of a chapter introducing phase diagrams and phase transitions to a layperson. I welcome any comments and suggestions. Feel free to try it out on your aunt or uncle!
I showed this to a friend, she couldn't get past the first page where you talk about liquids and gases being hard to distinguish. I think it was a too technical and didn't convince her. In her mind it is "obvious" how to distinguish them, so she complained to me that physicists just sweep things under the rug.
I agree with anonymous above. It is not the easiest read.
I feel like you are trying to be a good physicist and cover all the bases. But, to do that with a limited word count, you are using complex grammar and a dense vocabulary, which is precise to you and me, but is too high level for a layperson. Maybe some hard decisions have to be made to cut out beloved topics? For example, do you absolutely *need* to discuss V vs T here and now in this chapter (or ever)?
A good scientist might read something two or three or more times to get the full understanding. Lay people definitely don't want to go back over a paragraph. I suggest getting your figures in early to set the stage for them. For example, in the last paragraph on page 1, you could put Figure 2.1 immediately after "One method to detect phase transitions is to measure how the temperature and density of the material changes as heat is added." You will need to do some rewording but it'll put something in their mind's eye early.
Notice too that your paragraph jumps around. Your figure has a simple chronology: heat is applied over time. Your text has heating and cooling. I think the simple chronology is better because it is like a story.
If you look on the arXiv and in Nature journals there is a continuing stream of people claiming to observe superconductivity in some new material. There is a long history of this and it is worth considering the wise observations of Robert Cava , back in 1997, contained in a tutorial lecture. It would have been useful indeed in the early days of the field [cuprate superconductors] to have set up a "commission" to set some minimum standard of data quality and reproducibility for reporting new superconductors. An almost countless number of "false alarms" have been reported in the past decade, some truly spectacular. Koichi Kitazawa from the University of Tokyo coined these reports "USOs", for Unidentified Superconducting Objects , in a clever cross-cultural double entendre likening them to UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects, which certainly are their equivalent in many ways) and to "lies" in the Japanese translation of USO. These have caused g
Is it something to do with breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation? In molecular spectroscopy you occasionally hear this term thrown around. Google scholar yields more than 3000 hits. But I have found its precise meaning and the relevant physics hard to pin down. Quantum mechanics in chemistry by Schatz and Ratner is an excellent book , but the discussion on page 204 did not help me. "Herzberg-Teller" never appears in Atkins' Molecular quantum mechanics. So here is my limited understanding. Herzberg and Teller wanted to understand why one observed certain vibronic (combined electronic and vibrational) transitions that were not expected, particularly some that were expected to be forbidden on symmetry grounds. " Intensity borrowing " occurred. Herzberg and Teller pointed out that his could be understood if the dipole transition moment for the electronic transition depended on the nuclear co-ordinate associated with the vibration. In the Franck-Condo
I welcome discussion on this point. I don't think it is as sensitive or as important a topic as the author order on papers. With regard to paper authorship my general rule is that the person who does the bulk of the work, including actually writing the paper should be the first author. Doug Natelson has a good post on co-authorship , that I largely agree with. My only difference is that I am not really convinced that good practice prevails in the majority of circumstances. I fear there are increasing numbers of co-authors, particularly senior ones, with marginal contributions. But, what about conference talks and posters? Many of these are based on work that is already or about to be published. Should the author order be identical as the associated papers? I am not sure it should necessarily be. My tentative view is that the person who writes and submits the abstract and actually prepares and presents the post/talk should be the first author. Perhaps they should also highlig
I showed this to a friend, she couldn't get past the first page where you talk about liquids and gases being hard to distinguish. I think it was a too technical and didn't convince her. In her mind it is "obvious" how to distinguish them, so she complained to me that physicists just sweep things under the rug.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the very helpful feedback. Thank your friend too. I will work on simplifying.
DeleteI agree with anonymous above. It is not the easiest read.
ReplyDeleteI feel like you are trying to be a good physicist and cover all the bases. But, to do that with a limited word count, you are using complex grammar and a dense vocabulary, which is precise to you and me, but is too high level for a layperson. Maybe some hard decisions have to be made to cut out beloved topics? For example, do you absolutely *need* to discuss V vs T here and now in this chapter (or ever)?
A good scientist might read something two or three or more times to get the full understanding. Lay people definitely don't want to go back over a paragraph. I suggest getting your figures in early to set the stage for them. For example, in the last paragraph on page 1, you could put Figure 2.1 immediately after "One method to detect phase transitions is to measure how the temperature and density of the material changes as heat is added." You will need to do some rewording but it'll put something in their mind's eye early.
Notice too that your paragraph jumps around. Your figure has a simple chronology: heat is applied over time. Your text has heating and cooling. I think the simple chronology is better because it is like a story.
I hope that helps!
Unknown,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the very helpful comments and feedback. I will revise/rewrite accordingly.
cheers
Ross