Tuesday 19th May, 7.00 PM, Wollongong Science Centre, Bookings Essential!

“To planets or just to the shops, Plasmas pave the path” Assoc. Professor Christine Charles
Space Plasma, Power & Propulsion Group, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University.

Plasmas have existed since the very first moments of the Universe. It is the stuff of stars. It fills the space between stars. It gives us the beautiful northern and southern aurorae. Our houses have plasma TV displays, plasma lights (fluorescent tubes). Everywhere we look, there is plasma. But we stand on solid earth and the solid state accounts for less than one percent of the total mass of the Universe. The rest is plasma, a hot ionised gas containing positive and negative charges (except, perhaps, for dark matter). By properly harnessing the plasma state we can make microchips for computers, we can make plasma engines (thrusters) to get to the planets and we can make fuel cells to take people just down to the shops. The discovery in Australia of a current-free electric double layer (a cliff of potential like a river waterfall which energise charged particles falling through them) in a laboratory plasma is the basis of a new space engine: the Australian Helicon Double Layer Thruster.

The Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) International Women in Physics Lecture Series was instituted to celebrate the contribution of women to advances in physics. Under this scheme, a woman who has made a significant contribution in a field of physics will give a series of lectures around Australia, including a Public Lecture arranged by each participating branch of the AIP. The Lecture will be of interest to a non-specialist physics audience and is expected to increase awareness among students and their families of the possibilities offered by continuing to study physics.

Tuesday 28th April, two talks, starting 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm in the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

“How to get beyond the Standard Model” The Standard Model of particle physics --- describing the fundamental constituents of matter, and their interactions --- has been extraordinarily successful. Over decades it has passed every test set for it, and even now there are only a handful of measurements in conflict with its predictions: few-sigma effects of the kind that come and go, and are inevitable when many measurements are made. Any one of them might be the first sign of something new ... or they might all evaporate, as other presumed failings have done in the past. And yet we know that the Standard Model is incomplete. The mathematics itself tells us that something else must be going on, but doesn't determine what that "something" is. Experiment has to find a way. There are three broad strategies being pursued at accelerator laboratories around the world, to find that way forward. One can increase the energy of the particles in colliding beams, giving access to shorter distances, and more massive fundamental particles: this is the approach of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. One can make the beams more intense ("more amps" rather than "more volts") as at labs in California and Japan, using precision measurements to probe for new phenomena hiding in the fine print of the theory. Or one can use neutrinos, whose very difficulty --- they interact only by the weak nuclear force --- makes them sensitive to certain kinds of new physics. In this talk I will review these three approaches, with examples of how they have worked in the past, and of the experiments that are currently bringing them to life. Until it happens, we can't know which approach (all of them with Australian involvement) will be the one to finally break the Standard Model, and show the new physics beyond it.
Details + biography

“The Acoustics of Musical Wind Instruments – and of Musicians”Wind instruments have a valve or control oscillator (reed, player's lips, air jet) coupled to two acoustic waveguides: the bore of the instrument (downstream) and the player’s vocal tract (upstream). This talk introduces some of the interesting effects, including multiphonics or chords produced in woodwinds by superposition of standing waves, and the interactions between the resonances of the bore and the vocal tract. Our lab has developed techniques for measuring the acoustical properties of musical instruments, especially the acoustical impedance spectrum, (the ratio of acoustic pressure to acoustic flow, in nice analogy with electrical impedance). We have used this to provide databases for wind instruments that allow the development of physical models precise enough to make predictions and analyses useful to makers and players. We have also used it to measure the impedance spectrum of the vocal tract, while it is in use for speech, singing or playing. In this talk we’ll see how the player’s vocal tract is involved in performance on wind instruments, including the didjeridu, where the tract has a spectacular influence on timbre, and on some reed instruments, where it can have a strong influence on pitch.
Details + biography

Tuesday 24th March, two talks, starting 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm in the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

“First Scientific Results from OPAL, the new Australian Research Reactor”: Australian science is entering a new “golden age”, with the recent start-up of bright new neutron and photon sources in Sydney and Melbourne, respectively. The OPAL reactor and the Australian Synchrotron can be considered the greatest single investment in scientific infrastructure in Australia’s history. Fuel was loaded into the OPAL reactor in August 2006, and full power (20MW) achieved in November 2006. The formal user commenced in 2007, and fully analysed data sets have now been taken on all seven of the initial suite of instruments. 3 further instruments are in various states of construction, and substantial additional investment is also being made in sample-environment, extra instrumental options and polarised-neutron technology. An update will be given on the status of OPAL, the performance of its thermal and cold neutron sources and instruments, a selection of the first scientific results and future plans.
Details + biography

“Terahertz Science and Technology”: Beyond the rainbow lie “colours” imperceptible to the human eye. “Terahertz” or “Trays” are a palette of these. T-rays offer a new way of viewing our world. Practical applications span secure communications, materials science, sustainability, medicine and agriculture. But T-rays are difficult to produce, manipulate and detect. These are the main obstacles to realising the full potential of the emergent technology based on terahertz-frequency electromagnetic radiation. The talk will cover fundamentals of terahertz science and technology, the challenges presented, and how these are being addressed by current research.
Details + biography

Tuesday 25th November 2008 @ 6.00 pm (the talk will follow the AGM, which commences at 5:30 pm) At the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

The interstellar medium of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is a varied and dynamic place. Interstellar gas has temperatures ranging over more than six orders of magnitude and densities covering a range from a 10^-3 particles per cubic centimetre to more than a million particles per cubic centimetre. In addition, interstellar gas is constantly in motion with velocities anywhere from 1 km/s to 1000 km/s. The interstellar gas is constantly disturbed by massive stellar winds and supernova explosions which heat and reshape the gas on scales of hundreds of lightyears. Somehow in the midst of this dynamic environment interstellar matter must make incredible phase transitions from hot, diffuse, fast moving stellar by-products to cold, dense matter capable of forming new stars. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the Milky Way is not a closed box: some of the most dramatic motions force matter clear out of the Galactic potential and there is a constant influx of raw material from extragalactic space. Recent surveys of the Milky Way are allowing us to probe the physics of the interstellar medium in more detail than ever before. I will discuss what we what we have learned recently about how the interstellar medium evolves and how that affects the evolution of the Milky Way as a whole.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Dr Naomi McClure-Griffiths is a CEO Science Leader at the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility where she leads the Galactic Interstellar Medium group with the aim of better understanding the structure and evolution of our own Milky Way. Currently McClure- Griffiths is the principal investigator on the Galactic All Sky-Survey, an international project to map all of the hydrogen in the Milky Way. She holds an Honorary appointment at the University of Sydney and supervises PhD students in Australia, the U.S. and Japan. In 2006 she was awarded the Prime Minister's Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for her discovery of a new spiral arm in the outer Milky Way. In 2007 she was awarded the Powerhouse Museum Wizard prize. McClure-Griffiths started with CSIRO in 2001 as a Bolton Fellow and held a subsequent appointment as a CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellow. She completed her PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN, USA and her undergraduate in Physics at Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH, USA.

Wednesday 12th November 9am-5pm CSIRO Material Science and Engineering Lindfield, Sydney NSW

How will nanotechnology influence manufacturing in Australia? Does it represent a new paradigm in materials that will drive fantastic, futuristic products or it is destined to be a collection of incremental improvements? Do the benefits outweigh the unknowns?

Presentations from industry, universities, research organisations and government.

The day will feature:

• Update from NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into nanotechnology
• Australian nano-manufacturing case studies
• Overviews of university nanotech research
• Overviews of government nanotech research & regulatory directions
• Laboratory tours of CSIRO’s and NMI’s facilities
• Research poster competition with $1000 awarded to winner

Tuesday 28th October 2008 @ 6.00PM At the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

This session will highlight emerging issues impacting generally on science education for the future and the potential influences of these on learning and teaching of Physics across K-12 in NSW schools. It will also explore the relationship between physics education during the compulsory and postcompulsory years and opportunities available to and chosen by students in the twenty-first century.

Tuesday 24th September 2008 @ 6.00PM At the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

As a physicist, have you ever wondered what it would be like to invent something, commercialise it and then run your own multi million dollar a year business manufacturing and marketing it? That is not an unattainable dream! It is a reality that a few physicists have achieved in this technologically driven world. This presentation takes those interested on the pathway from discovery to commercialisation of an invention. The product developed was an efficient backscattered electron detector for use in a scanning electron microscope. However the pathway taken was one in which the rules could be applied to other inventions.

The 2008 Einstein Lecture: The Powerhouse Museum & The Australian Institute of Physics – NSW Branch

Einstein and the dream of plasma fusion energy

6.30pm, Monday August 25th 2008, Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street Ultimo

Guest presenter Joe Khachan from Sydney University will present live experiments and demonstrations detailing discoveries since Einstein’s work 103 years ago with particular focus on the science of energy:

We already use three states of matter to generate energy. Coal, for electricity, petrol and natural gas, to power our cars and buses. All of which produce carbon dioxide gas, the major component in human produced climate change.
Einstein’s most famous equation, E = mc2, provides a solution to our energy problems. It tells us that a small amount of mass (m) can be converted to a great deal of energy (E). Sadly, it doesn’t tell us how to do it.
Physicists are now using the fourth state of matter, known as a plasma, to make full use of Einstein’s equation to produce abundant and clean energy for millions of years. Known as plasma fusion energy, its raw materials can be found in ordinary water and we drink them every day.
Plasma has several common uses such as in large screen television sets, energy efficient lighting and even in most flat screen (liquid crystal) computer monitors. The future holds promise that the plasma will become a major energy generator method. In this lecture, the science of plasma physics and how it can be used to produce energy will be presented. Demonstrations of achieving the plasma state with ordinary household objects will be given. Members of the audience will leave with a simple device that gives them a unique viewing window on all that is made of a plasma around us.

Tuesday 19th August 2008 @ 6.00PM At the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

(With apologies to Shakespeare) 2008 is the 25th anniversary of completing my PhD – “Atomic laser spectroscopy in the UV and Visible”. I still have vivid memories of generating atomic spectra that resolved features of atomic structure previously unseen - the risk and excitement in the wee small hours in a lab in the Physics Department at St Andrews University, the prior art immediately shown to be wrong by the results of direct measurements, and the beginning of a life long interest in one of the pinnacles of physics achievement – theory and experiments on the hydrogen atom. It has been part of my good fortune that my professional life since has been as a physicist.

My areas of research activity have grown and evolved. 25 years on, I will share some reflections on what doing a PhD did for society and me; and how to approach making the decisions, in 2008 and beyond, on whether to do a PhD, where to do it, and with whom as a supervisor. This talk will aim to be of interest to all in physics, but will be of particular interest to students of physics contemplating a PhD, and any science “PhDs-to-be”.

Tuesday 29th July 2008 @ 6.00PM At the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

In this talk Dr Bartels will discuss some of the highs and lows of the commercialization process in Australia: 10 years of successful university research; a business plan that got it wrong; an angel investor at just the right time; government grants; clever engineering; and inevitable delays. The science underpinning the INPHAZE technology was developed by Professor Hans Coster and Dr Terry Chilcott, then at the University of New South Wales, over a period of over ten years.

They developed a unique high-resolution impedance spectrometer with precision in phase of one-thousandth of a degree (0.001) and resolution in magnitude of impedance of two-thousands of a per cent (0.002%). This kind of precision allows for atomic resolution, down to the level normally achieved by X-ray reflectometry. The INPHAZE product range comprises the high-resolution impedance spectrometer; 3- terminal measuring cell in Farady cage; and dielectric modelling software.

INPHAZE is uniquely placed to enter into R&D collaborations with research groups, so that specific measuring chambers can be designed and built, to meet the particular research needs of the client groups.

Starting 6:00 pm Tuesday 24th of June 2008, Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney.

Anatoly Rozenfeld is a Professor at the University of Wollongong, School of Engineering Physics. He was born in Kiev and has moved to Australia at the end of 1992. He has joined University of Wollongong in1993 as a lecturer aiming to work on development of medical radiation physics research and educational program. His scientific interest is in the development of innovative radiation semiconductor detectors and instrumentation based on them for radiation dosimetry, microdosimetry and nanodosimetry for radiation therapy including proton, heavy ions and synchrotron therapies, space applications and medical imaging and HEP. His major contribution in a field is in the development of mini-silicon detectors for real time dosimetry in radiotherapy and imaging. They are MOSFET detectors, silicon neutron sensors, nuclear spectroscopy based in vivo dosimetry, radiation damage monitoring dosimetry for nuclear reactors and HEP and others. Anatoly originated and contributing strongly to silicon microdosimetry direction and leading international collaboration in this field. Currently he is working with his team on semiconductor nanodosimetry.

Main Event: Monday 26th May, 6.00 pm Australian Museum (see below for alternate venues)

The Australian Institute of Physics International Women in Physics Lecture Series was instituted to celebrate the contribution of women to advances in physics. Under this scheme, a woman who has made a significant contribution in a field of physics will give a series of lectures around Australia, including a Public Lecture arranged by each participating branch of the AIP. The Lecture will be of interest to a non-specialist physics audience and is expected to increase awareness among students and their families of the possibilities offered by continuing to study physics.

New classes of optical fibres are rapidly emerging that allow fibres to be used well beyond their established role in data transmission and into applications in a broad range of areas including sensing, biology, medicine, defence and optical data processing. These developments have been enabled by research in a diverse range of areas including physics, materials science, process engineering and fluid mechanics. Recent progress in a range of areas will be reviewed. In particular, the use of tiny air holes to modify the propagation of light will be described.

How to get there:
The lecture will be held in the Terrace. Enter the Museum through the William Street entrance and catch the lift to the fourth floor. You may need to mention to security that you are at the museum for the Women in Physics Lecture.

Further enquiries, please contact:
Annette Dowd ((02)9514 2215, annette.dowd @uts.edu.au (remove space))
Mikayla Keen ((02)9320 6389, mikayla.keen @austmus.gov.au (remove space))

Alternate venues (follow links for venue specific information)

Tuesday 27th May, 7 pm, Wollongong Science Centre, University of Wollongong.

Wednesday 28th May, 11 am, Building E6A-102, Macquarie University (contact David Spence dspence @ics.mq.edu.au (remove space))

Starting 6:00 pm Tuesday 27th of May 2008, Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney.

Physics and nuclear science and technology have a symbiotic relationship. Physics underpins much of nuclear science while nuclear techniques assist in solving some of the fundamental problems in physics. ANSTO is Australia’s centre of expertise in nuclear techniques and applications, many of which have strong links with physics. In this talk Dr Collins will describe the range of research activities undertaken by ANSTO as well as the wide range of research facilitated by the techniques that ANSTO provides for the Australian research community. While Physics is fundamental, the applications are broad - in environmental research, radiopharmaceutical development, materials engineering as well as advancing the understanding of the structure and function of materials at the atomic, molecular and nano levels.

AIP-NSW Branch Public Talks - “Multiscale Brain Dynamics: Towards a First-Cut ‘Working-Brain’ Model” - Professor Peter Robinson, University of Sydney

Starting 6:00 pm Tuesday 22th of April 2008, Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney.

The electrical activity of the brain has been observed for over a century and is widely used to probe brain function and disorders, chiefly through the electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded by electrodes on the scalp. Indirect probes like functional MRI measure activity via its metabolic effects. However, the connections between physiology and measurements have been chiefly qualitative until recently, and most uses of the EEG and fMRI have been based on phenomenological correlations. A quantitative model of brain activity is described that spans the range of physiological and anatomical scales from microscopic synapses to the whole brain. Its parameters measure quantities such as synaptic strengths, signal delays, cellular time constants, and neural ranges, and are all constrained by independent physiological measurements. Application of standard techniques from wave physics allows successful predictions to be made of a wide range
of EEG and other phenomena, including time series, spectra, evoked responses to stimuli, seizure dynamics, measurement effects, sleep dynamics, and pharmacological influences, leading toward a first-cut "working-brain" model that reproduces salient dynamics across all scales from sub-mm to the whole brain. Fitting to experimental data also enables physiological parameters to be infered in normal and abnormal conditions, a technique that is now being commercialized.

Tuesday 15thApril, 2008 at 6.30 pm in the KEITH BURROWS THEATRE at the UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

The Fundamental Constants in Physics

The fundamental constants in physics are a mystery. Nobody understands their strange values, which we determine in the experiments. In the Standard Model of Particle Physics we are dealing with 28 fundamental constants. I will discuss these constants, which are mostly mass parameters. Astrophysical measurements indicate that the fine structure constant is not a real constant, but depends on time. This would imply that also the masses of atoms change in time. Experiments in Quantum Optics can give information on such a time change.

Refreshments beforehand from 6.15

Sponsored by the Dirac Fund and the Gordon Godfrey Bequest for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics at the University of New South Wales and by the NSW Branch of the Australian Institute for Physics

AIP-NSW Branch Public Talks

Starting 5:30 pm Tuesday 25th of March 2008, Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney:

5:30 pm "Attracting More Students to Physics" - Dr Mark Butler, Gosford High School

We regularly hear that that too few of our young people are choosing to study the technological sciences or higher level mathematics in senior high school. Why do students choose to study these subjects and why they choose not to? How have some Australian schools managed to increase participation rates in the enabling sciences? Is it really possible to make Physics and mathematics ‘cool’ at school?

This presentation will examine current issues in secondary physics education from the perspective of a practicing high school physics teacher. What physics is being taught in Australian Schools, who is teaching it and how it is being taught? Enrolment statistics, teacher qualifications and training, National Standards, the Australian Certificate of Education, and current small and large scale initiatives to attract more students and teachers to physics will be discussed.

7:00 pm "The Problem of Energy States on Metal Surfaces and How to Solve It" - Dr Marlene Read, University of New South Wales

Fundamental to understanding all electronic properties of surfaces is knowledge of the quantum electronic energy states. As devices get smaller, surface properties become more important. It has been suggested that systems such as organic molecules or alkali metal atoms adsorbed onto metal surfaces, such as sodium (Na) atomic layers on a copper (Cu) surface, could have possible applications as quantum electronic devices operating at room temperature. A detailed knowledge of the surface and interface states of these systems is needed. As a first step, methods to definitively determine all the surface states of clean metal surfaces must be developed. This includes higher-energy excited unoccupied surface energy states and resonances as well as occupied states for electrons of each spin orientation. Experimental probes include photoemission and inverse photoemission spectroscopy, target current spectroscopy, low energy electron microscopy and diffraction. Interpreting the features of the experimental data also involves the theoretical calculation of these states. Present theoretical methods do not always predict all surface states and those predicted may deviate significantly in energy from measured features.
Unoccupied higher-energy states and resonances are particularly difficult. This is, in part, because of the additional complication of substantial electron energy losses due to collisions with other electrons. A promising theoretical method which can potentially account for all surface states over their entire energy range is a scattering approach which builds up the metallic system by stacking a succession of atomic layers parallel to the surface. This method will be described and the recent results of its first application to Cu, aluminium (Al) and palladium (Pd) surfaces will be given. Comparison will be made with the results of other theoretical methods and experiment.

Superconductivity has been around for nearly 100 years. It was mostly thought of as a laboratory curiosity and yet this research area has won 6 Nobel Prizes in physics and has a very large number of scientists and engineers working in the research field. I will discuss the history of superconductivity which operates only at either “high” temperatures of minus 200 degrees Celsius (discovered 20 years old this year) and “low” temperatures of about minus 270 degrees Celsius (96 years old this year). I will explain what it is, what is understood and what is not about this exciting but baffling property of many materials when they are cooled down past a critical temperature. I will look at applications such as MRI, mineral exploration, Magnetoencephelography, transport and power distribution and use in the development to fusion as a future energy source. I will then look into the future to see where superconductivity will play a role in the modern world including quantum computers and quantum teleportation and ask whether superconductors that operate at room temperature and do not need cooling are possible. I will also look at some interest results on whether superconductivity can explain about how cells communicate to get other.

Date: Tuesday 4th December 2007
Venue: Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney
AGM Time: 5:30 PM
Lecture Time: Refreshments from 6:00, lecture at 6:35 PM

"We all know we should be scared of the effects of rising levels of Carbon dioxide, climate change and global warming – BUT how can scientists be so sure that they have got it right, or wrong. If you don’t know your orbital dynamics from your albedo, or get tongue tied talking about black body radiation then this talk is for you.

In the third annual Einstein Lecture Dr Mark Butler, winner of The Prime Minister’s award for science education will use demonstrations to demystify the physics and techniques in the arsenal of science."

Wednesday August 22nd 2007.
Coles theatre, Powerhouse Museum, Ultimo Sydney
6pm for a 6.30 start

This is a FREE event from the Powerhouse Museum and proudly supported by the Australian Institute of Physics.

Part of the Ultimo Science Festival, a National Science Week event.