Physicist To-Go Presentation

aps, bruce hapke, moon, optics, outreach

I participated in the American Physical Society's Physicists To-Go program. We talked a bit about EM radiation, perception, Gestalt theory, the greenhouse effect, AM radio, the Fourier transform, sonar, reflectance spectroscopy, how Galileo figured out the moon is not crystalline, how Pittsburgh's Bruce Hapke figured out the moon was made of silicon carbide, the Beer-Lambert law, methane detection, the SMOS satellite, why 5G uses so much spectrum, why STEM is a social process that needs diversity, Freeman Dyson's "birds and frogs," Cathy O'Neil's "slow-cooked math," the polysulfide shuttle in the cathodes of Li-S batteries, how clean energy is transforming our grid, and how to fight climate change.

My slides are available here.

I don't think the Gruyère joke landed with the high schoolers, though.

John Wilkins's The Discovery of a World in the Moone suggests there is a saying that the moon is made of green cheese. In response to the headline that US cheese can be called Gruyère, I suggest that to the French this is as shocking as calling silicon carbide 'cheese.'
John Wilkins's The Discovery of a World in the Moone suggests there is a saying that the moon is made of green cheese. In response to the headline that US cheese can be called Gruyère, I suggest that to the French this is as shocking as calling silicon carbide 'cheese.'

If you have any questions or comments, please reach out!