Condensed Matter

Reading Wilczek's book, see previous post, with it's extensive analogies to superconductivity, awakened some long slumbering interest in condensed matter physics. I took a couple of courses in solid state physics when I was in graduate school, but I was a lousy student and didn't learn anything, or at least not anything much. I think my teacher was not so hot either. I add this mainly because I remember that he was famous for never answering the question you were trying to ask. At one point he made a long series of lectures prominently featuring some three index symbols that seemed to be some sorts of wave functions - but we, myself and the other grad students could never figure out what the indexes were. A couple of attempts at asking ended in his usual bafflingly obscure non-answers. So we spent the rest of the semester sitting in stunned silence.

Anyway, I ordered Mahan's Condensed Matter in a Nutshell, partly on the odd chance that I might learn something, but mostly because I really like those Princeton Nutshell books. They are well made and pretty economical, and usually written well. I already owned a dozen or so condensed matter books, but they were all old, and probably obsolete, right?

The book, naturally, is full of equations with lots of indices. I sure hope he defines them someplace.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more