In honor of its 10th anniversary the CSUSM Physics Department is hosting 1997 Nobel Prize winner Dr. William Phillips. Dr. Phillips’ talk is a lively, multimedia presentation, including exciting experimental demonstrations and down-to-earth explanations.
At the beginning of the 20th century Einstein changed the way we think about time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the Universe. Atomic clocks are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the Global Positioning System (GPS). Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultracold atoms to achieve accuracies of about one second in 300 million years, while a new generation of atomic clocks is leading us to re-define what we mean by time. Super-cold atoms, with temperatures that can be below a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, use, and allow tests of, some of Einstein's strangest predictions.
This event is funded through the CSUSM chapter of the Society of Physics Students thanks to a CSUSM co-curricular grant and the Department of Physics.
