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Posts by: Robert P Crease
Physicists celebrate Singapore’s golden-jubilee year
Golden future – the second phase of Singapore’s giant Fusionopolis R&D centre.
By Robert P Crease in Singapore
I’ve landed in Singapore shortly before the 50th anniversary of the nation’s independence – Sunday 9 August is the official date. The event that brought me was a conference entitled “60 Years of Yang–Mills Gauge Field Theories”, the opening day of which on Monday 25 May featured speeches by C N Yang, who shared the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics, as well as David Gross – the 2004 Nobel-prize winner. I spoke on Wednesday morning.
But the conference isn’t the only physics-related event scheduled in Singapore’s jubilee year. Another is the opening of Fusionopolis II, the second phase of an innovative research and development (R&D) hub funded by the government’s Agency for Science and Technology Research (A*STAR). Phase one opened seven years ago – you can relive Physics World news editor Michael Banks’s experiences here; phase two is slated to open on 19 October. The initiative aims to supercharge Singapore’s research ecology by putting in close proximity materials-science research institutes, industrial research centres, and an international collection of eminent universities.
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The museum exhibit that you inspired
Inspired thinking – Robert P Crease in front of an exhibit at Manila’s Mind Museum that was inspired by Physics World readers.
By Robert P Crease in Singapore
It’s not often that you come across a museum exhibit based on a Physics World article. But I did on Saturday at the Mind Museum – an extraordinarily beautiful and original science museum in Taguig, on the outskirts of Manila in the Philippines.
Not only that, the exhibit is right at the entrance. You may recall that I once asked Physics World readers for their thoughts on the 10 most beautiful experiments and wrote up the results in an article in September 2002. The project turned into a book, The Prism and the Pendulum: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science, which came out the following year and which Physics World reviewed.
Maria Isabel Garcia, who was planning exhibits for the then-future Mind Museum, saw the article and book, and created an exhibit based on it, consisting of videos and explanations of each of the 10 experiments, along with a sculpture designed by the Philippine artist Daniel de la Cruz.
Bright lights, big city: a lighting revolution comes to New York
Bright spark: Giana Phelan of OLEDWorks shows-off some of the company’s wares.
By Robert P Crease in New York
“One well-lit place” is the best way to describe the exhibition hall at Javits Center in New York when it opened on Tuesday morning. I fully expected to be bedazzled at every turn because the venue is hosting LIGHTFAIR, the world’s largest lighting technology trade fair, and so the hall is packed with more than 600 booths designed to highlight, so to speak, the world’s lighting revolution.
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Light lunch with a Nobel prize winner
Lunchtime chat: Shuji Nakamura (right) in conversation with Scott Rosenfeld.
By Robert P Crease in New York
I seldom go to the Javits Center, New York City’s big, ugly convention space where the food, drinks and parking are way overpriced. Its shows on fashion, furniture and food don’t interest me and it’s a 20-minute walk from the nearest subway station. I once heard comedian Seth Meyer quip that it’s “smack-dab in the middle of New York’s stabbing district”.
On Sunday I went for the first time in years to attend the inaugural lunch of LIGHTFAIR, the world’s largest lighting trade show that draws architects, engineers and designers from all over the world. The featured speaker was Shuji Nakamura, the Japanese-born American materials scientist who shared last year’s Nobel in physics for developing the blue LED. Nakamura described his research path – when he started virtually everyone was working on selenium and he said he chose gallium only because he thought it would make it easier to publish – and was joined on stage by Scott Rosenfeld of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Quantum dances at the intersection of science and culture
Quantum dancers in action. (Courtesy: Grégory Batardon/BAM)
By Robert P Crease
I’m fascinated by the interactions between science and culture, which is what led me to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), which was hosting the US première of a dance piece called Quantum that had previously debuted where it had been created, at CERN. The event was staged in a simple, black-box space, with the audience seated around a square floor in three rows with no proscenium. But it was an upscale black box, with elegant seating upholstered in a blue-and-gold metallic sheen. Four industrial lights were suspended from the ceiling by long cables.
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How to give a great TEDx talk
Hitting his stride – Robert P Crease in full flow at yesterday’s TEDx talk at CERN after forgetting about the timer, which is the small object at his feet. (Courtesy: Maya Elhalal)
By Robert P Crease in CERN, Geneva
It’s great to go first.
Then you can actually listen to the other performances without fretting about your own. Somewhere near the middle of my TEDxCERN talk yesterday (Wednesday 24 September) I stopped being aware of the timer at my feet, began to have fun and left the stage at the end without even noticing whether I had exceeded my time limit. I made a brief stop backstage to lose my “Madonna” – a microphone that’s not on a neck clip or attached to a headset but extends out from an ear brace – then retook my seat in the front row.
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Behind the scenes at CERN’s TEDx event
All-star line-up – Physics World columnist Robert P Crease (far right) in front of the ATLAS detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider as he and his fellow speakers brace themselves ahead of today’s TEDx talks at CERN.
By Robert P Crease in CERN, Geneva
On Tuesday morning I addressed 1300 empty chairs.
I was the first of several presenters yesterday at a dress rehearsal for the TEDxCERN event, which takes place this afternoon, Wednesday 24 September. The rehearsal was held in a huge tent specially constructed for this event, and for CERN’s 60th-anniversary celebrations next week. The programme will be broadcast live today starting at 1.30 p.m. CEST (GMT+2).
It isn’t easy, I discovered, to grab the attention of empty chairs. I stumbled over sentences and forgot to click my slides. Occasionally I felt on automatic pilot, and had the eerie experience of hearing myself speak with a half-second delay, as if I were listening to myself from the back of my head. I went a minute over time and also discovered a typo in a slide that I had viewed approximately a zillion times before. I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only one; some of those who followed, too, tripped over delivery or had trouble with slides.
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A TEDx train wreck?
Calm before the storm – the view of CERN from Robert P Crease’s bedroom window as he tries desperately to shave a final two minutes off his TEDx talk.
By Robert P Crease in CERN, Geneva
On Sunday morning I arrived at CERN to find workers putting finishing touches on a huge tent where the lab will host its TEDx event on Wednesday, and its 60th anniversary festivities next week.
“TED”, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is a non-profit organization that promotes talks on what it calls “ideas worth spreading”; the “x” denotes an independent event organized in that spirit. This is the second TEDxCERN – the first took place last year – and it’s hosted by Brian Cox. More than 1000 people will watch 14 speakers, three performances and three animations; tens of thousands more viewers are expected online.
James Gillies, CERN’s head of communication, invited me to be a speaker. The subject this year, he said, was how science could better engage with major social challenges. He said that my May Physics World column “Why don’t they listen?” – on why scientists have difficulty getting politicians’ ears – had “hit the nail on the head”, and asked if I’d be interested in discussing the idea.
A week at CERN? A great excuse to implore colleagues take over my classes? Sure! All I had to do, I thought, was talk my way through some extended version of the column.
