The Department of Physics at Wells College brings the 108th Topical Symposium of the New York State Sectional Meeting of the American Physical Society to the Finger Lakes Region of New York. Because of late physics has enjoyed major breakthroughs in a variety of areas, this Spring’s meeting has the theme “Recent Advances in Physics.”
Some of these advances have MADE headlines: one such breakthrough would be the celebrated strong evidence for the so-called Englert–Brout–Higgs–Guralnik–Hagen–Kibble mechanism, which is believed to be the way in which particles acquire mass. Another recent advance is the indisputable detection of numerous earth-like planets in the vicinity of the solar system. Other advances are less trumpeted in the media, but may turn out to be just as revolutionary: exotic new bio- and meta- materials, with strange and potentially very useful properties; and breakthroughs in theoretical biology, are two examples. Connecting the two kinds of breakthroughs is the important work of communication of physics to the wider world.
Dr. Carl Hagen, of the University of Rochester, will give the keynote address on “50 Years of Broken Symmetry.” Dr Hagen is co-author of one of the three seminal 1964 papers which detailed how mass is generated in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics.
Other meeting activities include a poster session with contributions from both undergraduate and graduate students. We encourage students to submit posters of their work in any area of physics; best judged posters will receive cash awards. NY Section Website: http://www.aps.org/units/nyss |
