Austin College Physics

09/05/2022

Please join us to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Larry Robinson during Homecoming and Family Weekend!

06/03/2022

09/14/2021

Our Physics students are ready for graduate school! Visiting the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Texas at Dallas with Physics Professor Andra Petrean.

01/14/2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JHhsJPcPw0&feature=youtu.be

The Adams Observatory at Austin College offers you a quick tour of the sky that is visible in January and February, pointing out the easiest ways to find con...

11/11/2020

These last few weeks have been a flurry of activity - trying to get caught up with everything we did - including our Freaky Physics Friday event on Oct 30.

Nadia (in the middle) won the "Best Physics costume" and Allan, on the right, won the "Best Non-Physics costume," and Max, on the left, should have won at least an honorable mention for his "Physics Costume." Can you guess what they dressed like?

10/16/2020

I am so happy with the news that Roger Penrose has finally received the Nobel prize that he has long deserved. This photograph is from two years ago, and was taken following a five-hour recorded interview conducted in Oxford with my colleague Dean Rickles of the University of Sydney, Australia. This was the second interview we did with him, the first having been a year earlier. We were supported in this effort by the Center for the History of Physics of the American Physical Society. Hopefully we will soon be able to get transcripts of these interviews posted on the Center for the History of Physics web page. I will let you know when that happens. There is so much more in his work than the "mere" prediction of the existence of black holes. Of particular interest to me is his pioneering approaches on the nature of spacetime itself and the implications for an eventual merging of the conceptual foundations of general relativity and quantum mechanics in an ultimate theory of quantum gravity.

09/20/2020

Because 2020 is not a particularly good year, let us look back to 1920. That is the year in which the word "Robot" was introduced, by Czech playwright Karel Capeck. His play debuted the following year.

Karel Čapek's play "R.U.R." premiered in January 1921. Its influence cannot be understated.

09/20/2020

Our world is asymmetric, and this asymmetry can be more easily seen at nanoscale.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, a sufficiently small, cold object warms to the temperature of its surroundings faster than a warm object cools, according to a new theory.

09/18/2020

This tank is tough - grass and various debris can't stop it!