Featured series 
Tag: Physics
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Nation & World
Seeing light in a new way
Working with colleagues at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and post-doctoral fellow Ofer Firstenberg have managed to coax photons into binding together to form molecules — a state of matter that, until recently, had been purely theoretical.
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Nation & World
Where students own their education
The class Applied Physics 50 is grounded in a teaching philosophy that banishes lectures and encourages hands-on exploration, presenting a collection of best practices gleaned from decades of teaching experience and studious visits to college physics classrooms nationwide.
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Nation & World
Advancing science and technology
The National Science Foundation is awarding grants to create three new science and technology centers this year, with two of them based in Cambridge. The two multi-institutional grants total $45 million over five years.
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Nation & World
Seeing depth through a single lens
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a way for photographers and microscopists to create a 3-D image through a single lens, without moving the camera.
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Nation & World
Floating classroom
Putting problem sets, papers, studying, and exams behind them, a small group of Harvard students brought together by Professor Melissa Franklin built their own boat, going from raw materials to finished product in just five days and then launching the vessel on the Charles River.
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Nation & World
New investigators named
Adam Cohen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics, and Hopi Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, are among the 27 scientists nationwide to be appointed as investigators by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Nation & World
Reflections on a nuclear mission
Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Nobel laureate Roy Glauber reflected on his two years in Los Alamos, N.M., during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first atomic bomb.
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Nation & World
Water worlds surface
Astronomers have found a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62. This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone — the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth for liquid water to theoretically exist on their surfaces.
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Nation & World
Sharper view of matter
In a breakthrough that could one day yield important clues about the nature of matter itself, a team of Harvard scientists has measured the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter with unprecedented precision.
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Nation & World
Crunching data in the campaign cave
During an appearance on campus, Michelangelo D’Agostino explained how he worked to mine fundraising data, helping President Barack Obama win re-election.
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Nation & World
Physics and … basketball?
At first glance, physics and basketball seem worlds apart, but at Harvard they’re connected in more ways than one.
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Nation & World
Building a better machine
Students in the “Physics and Applied Physics Research Freshman Seminar” labored hard to improve on a model heat engine, continuing the work of a previous class.
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Nation & World
Pickles, prisms, and scientists
Celebrating its 11th year of public engagement, the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ (SEAS) Holiday Lecture Series dazzled and delighted audiences on Dec. 8 with a show guaranteed to kindle curiosity about the natural world.
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Nation & World
Margaret Nast Lewis, 101, dies
Margaret Nast Lewis, a former faculty member of the Harvard College Observatory, died in Cambridge on Nov. 23 at the age of 101.
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Nation & World
Applied physics as art
Harvard researchers spray-paint ultrathin coatings that change color with only a few atoms’ difference in thickness.
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Nation & World
Robert Vivian Pound
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October, 2, 2012, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Robert Vivian Pound, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Pound was one of the historic figures of twentieth-century physics, playing a central role in several discoveries…
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Nation & World
Nobel ties in physics
Harvard has early connections to both winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics.
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Nation & World
Clues in the cucumber’s climb
Harvard researchers, captivated by a strange coiling behavior in the grasping tendrils of the cucumber plant, have characterized a new type of spring that is soft when pulled gently and stiff when pulled strongly.
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Nation & World
Helping hunt for the Higgs
For decades, it has been the holy grail of particle physics, an elusive subatomic particle that offered the tantalizing possibility of explaining how much of the universe works. Billions of dollars have been spent in the search for it. Thousands of researchers — including dozens from Harvard — have conducted trillions of experiments as part…
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Nation & World
Hoffman, Beerbohm win teaching prize
Physicist Jenny Hoffman and political theorist Eric Beerbohm have won the Roslyn Abramson Award, given annually to assistant or associate professors for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
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Nation & World
Ronold W. P. King
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on December 6, 2011, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Ronold W. P. King, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor King, a dedicated teacher and scholar, was an expert on linear antennas.
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Nation & World
Michael Tinkham
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on December 6, 2011, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Michael Tinkham, Rumford Professor of Physics and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics in the Physics Department and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Emeritus, was placed upon the records.…
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Nation & World
Making the worms turn
Biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel has developed new techniques to monitor and influence the behavior of roundworms to learn how their basic nervous systems work, a first step to understanding the circuitry in more complex creatures, like humans.
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Nation & World
Physics at 2,500 feet
In 1934, a group of enterprising young Turks pooled their money and bought construction plans for a glider. Pioneers in the infancy of aviation, they built it by hand, out of wood and fabric, and when the time came for its maiden flight, they drew straws.
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Nation & World
A key to modernity
Rummaging through worm-eaten layers of parchment at a monastery in southern Germany in 1417, the scribe Poggio Bracciolini discovered a poem titled “De Rerum Natura,” or “On the Nature of Things,” by the Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. On that day, according to Professor Stephen Greenblatt, history swerved and modernity began.
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Nation & World
A building block for GPS
A professor emeritus of physics who died recently at 96, Norman Ramsey laid the foundation for the atomic clock, which allows scientists to measure time more precisely than ever, and is a critical component in GPS.
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Nation & World
Imaging instruction
Harvard researchers have developed a “primer” to identify some of the most useful probes for super-resolution imaging. As described recently on Nature Methods’ website, the work also identified the key characteristics that are important for imaging, giving researchers a framework for evaluating other probes, or even designing custom-made molecules to use in imaging.
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Nation & World
Nobel laureate Norman Ramsey, 96
Norman Ramsey, Harvard physics professor since 1947 and Nobel laureate in 1989, died at age 96 on Nov. 4, 2011.
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Nation & World
For $1,000, who won on ‘Jeopardy!’?
Sure, Harvard undergraduates have the opportunity to learn from leaders in their fields, including Nobel laureates, global leaders, and world-class scholars, who all teach in the University’s classrooms. Thanks to Joon Pahk, a preceptor in physics, students can add a new academic feat to that list: seven-time “Jeopardy” champion.
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Nation & World
Initiative challenges drug crisis
Taking aim at the alarming slowdown in the development of new and lifesaving drugs, Harvard Medical School is launching the Initiative in Systems Pharmacology, a comprehensive strategy to transform drug discovery by convening biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, physicists, computer scientists, and clinicians to explore together how drugs work in complex systems.
