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Allan Adams: Theoretical Physicist Glider Plane Pilot

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  • 10 Questions for Allan [1:29] 10 Questions for Allan
  • Searching for Lift [2:27] Searching for Lift
  • Making Waves [1:44] Making Waves
  • 30 Second Science: Allan Adams [0:30] 30 Second Science: Allan Adams

Q&A with Allan
You can make beautiful things starting with simple ingredients.
His Science:
Theoretical Physicist

His theory of choice: String

What he uses it for: To study the history of the universe

His message to his Physics students: You can do it!

His Secret:
Glider Plane Pilot

What he doesn’t need to fly: An engine

What he does need to fly: A glider

How he does it: Joyfully

About Allan Adams

Allan is a theoretical physicist, specializing in string theory. He teaches at MIT.

Posts about Allan Adams

Lee Kolbert

[Teacher Tips] Mistakes

Posted by Lee Kolbert | 14 December 2010

In “10 Questions for Allan,” Allan Adams is asked how often he makes mistakes. His response is “daily.” Although most adults would not be surprised at such an answer, most of my young students would likely be confused as to how someone who is so smart and successful could make so many mistakes. In their worlds, making mistakes equates to not being smart. It’s so important for me to try to reshape my students’ view of failure, success, and the value of learning through making mistakes. How could this ever be considered a faux pas?

Students would be interested to learn that many mistakes lead to not only further learning, but also inventions:

Chocolate chip cookies were invented by mistake. In 1930, Ruth Wakefield was running the Toll House Inn and was baking her chocolate butter cookies when she realized she was out of Baker’s chocolate. So she broke pieces of sweetened chocolate into the mix and expected the dough to absorb the chocolate. She was surprised to see that it hadn’t, but the results were equally delicious. We are still enjoying Toll House Cookies today, thanks to someone’s mistake that worked.

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Virginia Hughes

Chalk It Up

Posted by Virginia Hughes | 07 December 2010

Allan prefers blackboards to whiteboards because of the rich history of chalk. I had no idea where chalk comes from, so I looked it up. Turns out it’s a long, long story.

The coccolithophore Gephyrocapsa oceanica, via Wikimedia Commons One hundred million years ago, tiny creatures called coccolithophores were hanging out at the surface of the ocean, soaking up some sun. Then they died, and their calcium carbonate-filled skeletons dropped to the sea floor. Then more died, piling on top of the others and eventually creating a layer of lime mud.

Over time, as the bottom layers of gunk were exposed to more and more pressure, and more and more heat, they turned into the soft, porous rock we know as chalk.

During this era of the Earth’s history, sea levels were incredibly high, which meant that there wasn’t much land around to drop other kinds of sediments into the floor. That’s why chalk is mostly white.

The skeletons of many other sea creatures, though—such as sea urchins, moss animals, and sponges—did get trapped in the chalk deposits. Less frequently, live animals—such as this stunning starfish—were also caught in the chalk, to the ‘The Needles’ chalk stacks off the Isle of Wight, in England. Photo by Greg Marshall, via Flickr great delight of today’s fossil hunters.

Millions of years after the horizontal layer of chalk formed, continental movements gradually pushed it up into large mounds that we can still see today. For example, take a peek at “The Needles” chalk formation off the Isle of Wight, in England:

The coccolithophores, it seems, made it back to the water’s surface.

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Tom Miller

I Believe I Can Fly

Posted by Tom Miller | 06 December 2010

Want to take a ride on a glider plane?

Your pilot today will be our beloved physicist and wave-lover, Allan Adams. Enjoy!

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Eoin Lettice

Gliding isn’t just for physicists!

Posted by Eoin Lettice | 02 December 2010

Speaking of gliding… new research out of Virginia Tech has looked at the dynamics of gliding reptiles and flying snakes!

The work, presented at the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) meeting held last week focused on five related species of tree-dwelling snakes found in South and Southeast Asia.

The snakes can “fly” by flinging themselves off their tree-top perches and gliding to another tree or to the ground.

The researchers looked at Chrysopelea paradisi and recorded their gliding patterns on camera after the snakes launched themselves off a branch at the top of a 15-meter tower.

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Tom Miller

Beneath The Surface

Posted by Tom Miller | 01 December 2010

I took physics back in my college days, but it was definitely the “for poets” version—you know, greatly simplified so that we poet types could learn a little physics without risk of our heads exploding. Now I love to read about physics and even more so, to hear physicists explain the world to me in the comfort of the magnificent “Secret Life” studios. Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of an equation! Still, I have to admit that my eyes do glaze over when faced with an equation more complicated than peanut butter + chocolate = happiness. My attitude can be summarized thusly: Tell me about it, but don’t make me do the math.

And so we come to Allan Adams.

Allan is so enthusiastic about physics (and everything else that he loves) that it’s pretty much impossible to not jump onto whatever ship—or glider plane—he happens to be piloting at the moment. He explained to us during his interview that “the equations [in physics] are a way of telling a story and giving a description to some complicated phenomena that are beautiful.”

But it wasn’t until Allan gave me a concrete example that it really made sense to me:

“You know, you sit on a surfboard looking out into the ocean, and you watch sets of waves come in. And you might think that it’s weird that the waves seem to die out before they get to me. But there’s a beautiful explanation for that, and it’s encoded in an equation. And you look at the equation, and the equation isn’t very interesting. But it’s telling you that when you’re out on the surfboard, wait a little while. Wait till a few waves have gone by. That’s when you’ll catch a really good wave. So physics is not telling you some set of equations. It’s telling you about sitting on a surfboard, catching waves in the ocean. And the most important thing in studying physics and in coming to physics is seeing the difference there, not getting distracted by the equations on the surface, but reading the story that’s encoded.”

The equations tell a story. Just like sheet music can never actually be a sonata or an opera or even a Lady Gaga tune, so too the equations aren’t the thing itself, but the language that gets us to the thing itself. So I understood Allan to be saying this—learn about the equations on the surface, understand them, but always keep in mind that the surface is only there so we can go beneath the surface.

And surfing is a pretty great way to do that.

It’s a message even a poet can understand.

Comments
Tom Miller

Ask Allan Your Questions

Posted by Tom Miller | 01 December 2010

Calling all glider pilots, surfers, physicists, and those who are interested in any of these fields of endeavor. Ask Allan your questions in the comments section of this post, and he promises to answer them. Only not when he’s flying, surfing, or doing physics (stay safe, Allan!).

UPDATE: We are no longer taking more questions for Allan. But check out his answers in the comments. He may have answered a question you were going to ask!

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