Physics Camp Day One

Physics Camp was not too bad. On monday morning I reached at 7:30 not knowing that there was still one more hour, so I got bored and solved the rubik's cube 30+ times in total. Then there were lectures.

The first lecture was about particle physics - Things at a really really really...small scale, just like me. We were reminded to try not to emit "Z particles" ZZZZZzzzzz...even if we did not understand...lol. It was not too hard to follow, until all the weird experiments and reasoning on subnuclear particles came out. Another problem was the number of particles talked about. It was something like the particle physics topic discussed in 'beyond foundation' physics module joelle, nick, emman and I took last year.

Then properties of these particles were discussed. All kinds of numbers were introduced...like lepton number, baryon number, spin number, angular momentum number, strangeness number, charm number etcetra. And it started to become very funny and TL and I were laughing at how many types of 'numbers' were invented just to classify these small stuff.

Then there were also anti-particles. This part was very funny. Particles have energy, so anti-particles have negative energy, and according to Pauli's exclusion principle, things will tend to go to the state of minimal energy, and negative is smaller than positive, so everything will have negative energy. But that does not make sense, so a scientist invented a rule that negative energy were like holes in the universe and sometimes sometimes these holes run out so there must be positive energy particles when they run out. (something funny like that) But that would create ambiguity to the law of conservation of energy!

Then the speaker said there was another scientist who solved this problem by saying that these particles travel backwards in time, so its energy changes go backwards (or something else confusing like that) That will solve conservation of energy, but then violate conservation of time; but there is no law of conservation of time, so it was not as bad as violating conservation of energy...

Hmm...

The second lecture was about really really really BIG...stuff - cosmology. The speaker's voice and tone seemed a little weird to me. He kept on saying on how newtonian laws can describe the universe, and only two equations were needed, Fluid equation and the Friedmann equation. There was a lot of differentiation which we have not learnt in the lecture, and he kept on emphasising "It is ONLY simple differentiation why don't you try to do a LITTLE math and see what you get?"

I guess that explains TL falling asleep.

The third lecture was about things on a small but not so small scale compared to the first lecture - Nanotechnology and material science. The speaker was chinese and he was really interesting. Then he showed us some pictures of nano writings and sculptures like 'NUS' carved out on nanocarbon fibers.

Then there was also this demonstration where he showed us how toilet paper in ice can be so strong, unlike pure ice alone.

And how a special material could stop water from sticking onto the window, only that the material was black and would not be that suitable for making a window.

TL and I did not want the lecture to end, but lunch still arrived.

After lunch we had a talk about how cool, and cold superconductors were. Once you ran a current through them, it would almost not stop and would be able to run via magnetic levitation! Continuously.

Then as others went for some supercondutor competition, the rest including me did a cartesian diver competition; those stuff where you squeeze a bottle and the thing inside sinks, and when you let go it floats. We had to make a pair such that it fufilled certain tasks. But Ben, TL and I got bored quickly and started poking holes in the bottles and made fountains with them, resulting in a really wet mess...