For nearly a year now, I have been obsessed with particle physics! And I'm not even a physicist. I figure that if people can have hobbies such as gardening or playing cards, why can't particle physics be a hobby of mine?
I am a social scientist, an associate professor of human development and family studies (HDFS) at Texas Tech University. Although I took some physics when I was younger (a year of it in high school and one course in calculus-based physics for life-science majors as an undergrad at UCLA), my new interest in physics has developed only in recent years.
My primary research interest within HDFS is the study of social networks (e.g., friends, family members), particularly as related to young people's alcohol consumption.
In early 2003, while browsing in a bookstore, I came across the book Linked: The New Science of Networks, by Notre Dame physicist Albert László Barabási. That a physicist would be writing about the same topic I was studying was absolutely fascinating to me. To a considerable extent, Linked had to do with how networks we see in everyday life (people being linked through friendship, actors linked through appearances in the same movies, power plants and stations linked by wires, internet sites linked on the World Wide Web) often resemble mathematical representations of phenomena in physics. One example, which I'll discuss in a future posting, is how what are called "winner-take-all" networks resemble a Bose-Einstein condensate.
Other books coming out around the same time, such as Sync by Steven Strogatz and Six Degrees by Duncan Watts, presented similar ideas, linking everday events to mathematical/physical phenomena. These books all laid the foundation for my upcoming excursion into physics.
What really (pardon the pun) accelerated my interest in physics, however, was when, in April 2004, I was just flipping channels with my remote and I saw a very engaging speaker on C-SPAN's Book TV programming, talking about historical and contemporary issues in physics.
The speaker, I quickly learned, was Columbia University physicist and mathematician Brian Greene. Here was this articulate, clear, even humorous professor talking about physics in a way that was irresistable. Maybe it's just me, but I saw somewhat of a resemblance (both in physical appearance and in mannerisms) between Greene and one of my favorite comedians, Bill Maher (judge for yourself).
I immediately went out and bought Greene's book, The Fabric of the Cosmos. In this book, Greene put the advanced mathematics in the endnotes for anyone who was interested, but kept the main text of the book at a more conceptual level.
Greene's belief that the important ideas of physics can be made accessible to a general audience (albeit a pretty educated one) if the mathematics is put to the side is further exemplified by a statement of his in the following interview:
Q: How far can us readers really get in understanding the nature of the universe?
A: For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics. But when the impediment of mathematics is removed and the ideas themselves are rephrased in common language, they're not that hard to understand. So, I say: give it a try--and most people do find that they grasp much more than they expected.
It is this idea of trying to convey the concepts of physics that animates my desire to develop this website. The mathematics associated with virtually any area of physics is way over my head, yet I feel I can grasp and convey a great deal. Given my minimal training in physics, I will of course stick closely to the appropriate scientific sources (generally either books or websites) when discussing a topic. Fortunately, a number of people have created animated, user-friendly websites illustrating a number of physical concepts, which I can link to.
A fortuitous coincidence that helped further reinforce my incipient interest in physics occurred at the July 2004 national convention of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) in Cincinnati. My main interest within SABR is baseball statistics, particularly a topic called "The Hot Hand" (if you get the idea that I like making webpages, you are correct).
One of the people I met at SABR was Alan Nathan, a physics professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who, appropriately enough, maintains a website on the physics of baseball (I plan to do some future entries on the physics of various sports).
When I met Nathan, I was midway through Greene's book. I immediately made it clear to Nathan that I was not a physicist and was interested in physics purely as a hobby. But there I was, discussing electroweak unification and the (as yet unfulfilled) idea of grand unification with him. One contribution Nathan made to my knowledge of physics was his correction of my pronunciation of the last name of Harvard physicist Howard Georgi. I had pronounced it "Georgie," whereas the proper pronunciation is "Georg-EYE."
From there, I have never looked back. I have read several additional physics books, covering such areas as quantum mechanics, supersymmetry, and quantum chromodynamics. In addition, I frequent a number of physics websites, many of which I'll note in my future postings.
I also attend some of the physics seminars at my home institution, Texas Tech University. Even though about 80% of what is said (the mathematical content) is over my head, I'm happy to try to grasp what I can of the remaining 20%. Within the Texas Tech physics department, I would like to thank professors Lynn Hatfield (department chair), Roger Lichti, Charley Myles, Beth Ann Thacker, and others for their friendliness, patience, and generosity in entertaining the questions of a physics novice from across campus.
These are all things I will discuss in the coming weeks, months, and (hopefully) years. I will try to post on a roughly weekly basis. Though particle physics is my favorite area, I will write about other areas of physics as well. The rationale for the name I've chosen for this website, Watered Down Physics, should be pretty apparent. Anything that I can understand is, of necessity, watered down from its full mathematical glory. Where some may use "watered down" in a pejorative sense, I find it an accurate (and catchy) name.
I hope you'll come along for the journey!