Condensed concepts

My mental health this year has been up and down. It is not particularly clear why I have struggled at times, given the sources of stress were not particularly bad. Thankfully, now I am the best I have been all year. This may be because I have been quite proactive in taking action. First, there are the basics: adequate sleep, downtime, exercise, and diet. At one point I also cut out all caffeine and alcohol. I also went to the psychologist several times, did more mindfulness exercises, and increased my medication, in consultation with my doctor. This experience underscores some of the complexities and associated poor understanding of both mental illness and healing. There are biomedical, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. There is a high causal density , just like in public policy. Why did I get worse? Why did I get better? As a patient, I don't want to do a series of clinical trials on myself and just change one variable, one after the other. It is better to attack

Expert readers: please note this post is written for the general audience of a Very Short Introduction . General comments welcome. Condensed matter physics is not just defined by the objects it studies: condensed states of matter. Rather, the field is also defined by a particular approach. The focus is on finding unifying concepts and organizing principles to address fundamental questions concerning a wide range of phenomena in materials that are chemically and structurally diverse. This approach means looking at the different scales (length, time, and energy) associated with phenomena. In particular, CMP often looks at scales intermediate between the macroscopic and atomic scales. I argued before, that in this sense Kamerlingh Onnes was the first condensed matter experimentalist. In a similar sense, Lev Landau (1908 - 1968) is arguably the first condensed matter theorist, with three papers that he published in 1937, marking the beginning of theoretical CMP. Landau lived in the So

Finishing a thesis (honours, masters, or PhD) can be exhausting: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. When you finally submit it, the last thing you want to do is look at it again or reflect on the experience. Unfortunately, many students do not have a break and soon they are caught up in a job search or starting a new job. Furthermore, it is easy for students to default to the academic track: Masters, PhD, postdoc1, postdoc2, .... I have posted before about how the privileged few who get tenure may not make the most of  transitions within an academic career . Here the focus is on students. After a well-earned break, it is worth reflecting on the following questions, particularly before deciding what you might do next and how to make that a positive experience. What are some things you enjoyed? did not enjoy? What do you think you did well? not well? What did you learn about yourself, particularly your strengths and weaknesses? What did you learn about those you w

An important question concerning spin-crossover compounds concerns the origin and the magnitude of the interactions between the individual molecular units. There is a nice paper Evolution of cooperativity in the spin transition of an iron(II) complex on a graphite surface Lalminthang Kipgen, Matthias Bernien, Sascha Ossinger, Fabian Nickel, Andrew J. Britton, Lucas M. Arruda, Holger Naggert, Chen Luo, Christian Lotze, Hanjo Ryll, Florin Radu, Enrico Schierle, Eugen Weschke, Felix Tuczek, and Wolfgang Kuch An impressive achievement is the control of the number of monolayers (ML) of SCO molecules deposited on a highly oriented surface pyrolytic graphite. The coverage varies between 0.35 and 10 ML. The shape of the spin-crossover curve changes significantly as the number of monolayers varies, as shown in the upper panel below. The natural interpretation is that as the number of monolayers increases the interaction between molecules (co-operativity) increases. This can be quantifie

Oral exams (vivas) are quite common for most postgraduate degrees involving research. The basic goal is to provide an efficient mechanism for the examiners to determine a student's level of understanding of what they have done. Most committees comprise both experts and non-experts. Most are actually quite friendly. If the non-experts learn something new they will be happy. Sometimes an examiner may ``grill'' a student simply because they want to understand what is going on. I think the main reason thinks occasionally get tense is when there is a member of the committee who has a poor relationship with the student's advisor or doesn't think much of their research. To prepare take any opportunity to attend another student's oral exam or ask them about what questions  they were asked and tips. Some common mistakes that students make are to assume: Everyone on the committee has read the thesis in detail. The committee is going to ask highly technical and nua

I was asked for an update on this. The challenges are formidable, but not insurmountable. Here are slides from a talk on the subject. As always, it is important not to reinvent the wheel. There are already  some excellent resources and organisations.  A relevant organisation is  AuthorAID  which is related to  inasp , and has  online course s on writing. People I know who have taken these courses, or acted as mentors, speak highly of them. Authors should also make use of software to correct English such as  Grammarly . Publishing Scientific Papers in the Developing World  is a helpful book, stemming from a 2010 conference. Erik Thulstrup  has a nice chapter "How should a Young Researcher Write and Publish a Good Research Paper?"

I have now finished my first draft of chapter 3 , of Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction.  I welcome comments and suggestions. However, bear in mind my target audience is not the typical reader of this blog, but rather your non-physicist friends and family.  I think it still needs a lot of work. The goal is for it to be interesting, accessible, and bring out the excitement and importance of condensed matter physics. This is quite hard work, particularly to try and explain things in an accessible manner. I am also learning a lot. I have a couple of basic questions. How is the symmetry of the rectangular lattice and the centred lattice different? When was the crystal structure of ice determined by X-ray diffraction? [Pauling proposed the structure in 1935.]