Physics for Math Students

Posted by Chad Orzel on December 19, 2009
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I gave a talk last night to the Albany Area Math Circle, a group of high-schoolers who are interested in science and math, and enter and do very well in national math competitions. I think there were 48 kids there last night, which was pretty impressive.

I gave basically the same talk I gave at Boskone on the Many-Worlds Interpretation, including reading the dog dialogue from Chapter 4. I made an effort to update the SF references a little, to things that people born in the early 1990′s might recognize. (Wow, I feel old.)

The talk was probably a little too abstract for the audience, and I have some ideas on how to fix it (of course, I could’ve used those yesterday, when I was looking at the slides and deciding not to change them…). They did seem to follow most of it, though, so that’s good. I got some pretty good questions afterwards, too.

Anyway, I think that’s the official first talk about the book since the book has existed as a real object. The first of many, I hope. Thanks to the Math Circle for having me, and good luck with your upcoming competitions.

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  1. #1 Mary O'Keeffe
    December 19, 2009

    Thanks again for speaking to our students last night. I’ve posted briefly about it, and will post more after we have chance to read your book.

    We are supposed to keep information about the existence and number of our perfect scorers (if any) from last night’s contest under wraps until January 1, so I thought that was a nice way to connect in with wave functions and the many worlds theme.

  2. #2 Greg Laden
    December 19, 2009

    The very first public talk I ever gave was in Albany. On math.

  3. #3 Acai Optimum
    December 22, 2009

    Excellent… I bet many of them left the talk better than they were… The rate at which our students are falling behind in math is alarming… With projects like this, we can start from the ground up again!