Sigh

Heh, "ultra-low-energy end", I like that, I'll have to start using that in my job description!

But sigh is right, I get this a lot from friends and relatives too - just mention that you do physics and they'll assume you know enough and/or want to talk about whatever latest fad in strings is. Although admittedly, it's still slightly better than someone wanting to know how UFO propulsion worked, and if the government covered it up, etc, etc.

Damn you! I was re-reading QED yesterday and wanted to use that quote as a jumping off point for my own post.

Now I have to wait until it this post is old enough that it isn't stealing, it is reviving as a useful source.

That is a good Feynman quote. I personally like Brian Greene, but then, my own field of study is far removed from the little (I instead get waitresses asking me why Pluto isn't a planet anymore), and The Elegant Universe was one of the books that made me realize, "ooooh, physics is soooo much more interesting than chemistry!" (because in high school they are of course at about the same level of Coolness).

If you're looking for a topic to write on, I would be interested in hearing about physicists who work on a human scale. By that I mean things people can see with unaided eyes and hold in their hands, rather than needing microscopes, telescopes, or even more exotic equipment just to get started.

Come to think of it, are there even such physicists anymore, or was that part of the science figured out long ago?

Soft condensed matter

http://nagelgroup.uchicago.edu/index.htmlh
http://jfi.uchicago.edu/~jaeger/group/granular.html

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/duriangroup/

http://chaos.ph.utexas.edu/

http://www.phys.psu.edu/~schiffer/

http://bigbro.biophys.cornell.edu/index.html (it requires big toys, but look at the shock wave and fuel spray stuff. I can't find a good link quickly, but if you can find the stuff done by Jin Wang at Argonne he is doing a bunch of fluid mechanics) (I work on some of this stuff)

Physics on the human scale is called engineering. (Apologies to anyone from applied math or "materials science" who is reading this.) For example, I know engineers who study how to use carbon fiber to make a better concrete, and want to take nanotubes from the physics lab into the manufacturing sector ASAP. Fluid dynamics research is mostly done by PhD engineers and applied mathematicians even though it is still physics.

However, the "atomic and molecular" folks have made some BEC quantum systems where you can almost see the interference of matter waves with the naked eye. IIRC you still need a magnifying glass or low power microscope, but that is not too different from needing to wear glasses to drive.

In response to commenter #4:
So called "complex systems" research contains a lot of physics at the human scale. See here for example.

A few months ago, a fascinating article came out about the low energy application of the Feynman diagrams of QED, namely, applying them to qubits. The advantage over the usual use in QED is that the diagrams are finite at all orders of perturbation theory.

This makes another way of teaching QED. Instead of beginning with a useless scalar theory that has nasty infinity problems, and then generalizing to a spin theory with nasty infinity problems, you begin with a spin-1/2 theory that is finite (and useful), and then generalize to the nasty theory.

I'm very enthusiastic about their elegant little paper, and am a bit surprised that it hasn't gotten a lot more attention.

From the comments, I assume the QED book is the one he wrote for laymen, the one subtitled "strange theory of matter and light" or something like that, and not his QED book for grad students. Applying Feynman diagrams to qubits is mathematically somewhere between that Feynman book and Peskin & Schroeder.

Carl Brannen, you're right. The book is:

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter,
by Richard P. Feynman, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1 Oct 1985, 176 pages, ISBN 0691024170.

Links to reviews and a way to get the videocassette:

http://www.oberlin.edu/physics/dstyer/TeachQM/QED.html

re 4 and 6, I had posted a list of links to complex system stuff that the blog seems to have eaten by the blog :(. So, I will try again.

http://nagelgroup.uchicago.edu/
http://jfi.uchicago.edu/~jaeger/group/granular.html

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/duriangroup/index.htm

http://chaos.utexas.edu/swinney.html

http://bigbro.biophys.cornell.edu (the fuel spray stuff)

http://www.phys.psu.edu/~schiffer/

at 4 and 6, I have now tried twice to post a list to links to groups doing some human scale work and twice I have been shown a screen that says "held for moderation"...it must take the list of links as spam, so

Jager and Nagel at University of Chicago

Durian @ University of Pennsylvania

Schifer @ PSU

Swinney @ Utexas

Wang @ argonne

In response to commenter #4:
So called "complex systems" research contains a lot of physics at the human scale. It is a big part of the International Conferences on Complex Systems, sponsorede by the New England Complex Systems Institute, #7 of which will be held 28 October-2 November 2007 in Boston

Also see:

http://necsi.org/events/iccs7/

What exactly does Feynman mean in that quote?