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-: Have you ever learned a scientific fact
and wondered, "But how do they know that?"
This happens a lot in physics,
which often deals with things
that are either very far away,
like stars and black holes,
or very small, like atoms, electrons, and even quarks.
Objects that are so distant or so tiny
that no matter how advanced our technology gets,
the very laws of the universe prevent us
from observing them directly.
In this episode, Dr. Shireen Adenwalla introduces us
to the nanoscopic world of condensed matter physics.
Which explains the behavior of familiar solids and liquids,
but also strange and beautiful phenomena
like super conductivity, super fluidity,
and other super things.
Shireen explains how the sense of wonder
and creativity fostered by the visual arts
can help scientists do better science,
by finding clever ways to visualize phenomena
we can't observe directly.
And how scientists in turn,
use scientific principles to create beautiful art.
I'm Jocelyn, and let's get verbing!
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-: Well of course, here everybody studies magnetism,
but magnetism is a beautiful phenomena.
-: Yeah, it is.
-: One of the phenomena I'm excited about in general
is superconductivity, because once again,
that's a many-body effect.
You know, you've got lots of electrons,
and yet somehow, they manage to make this,
wave function that is macroscopic, right?
Yeah, so I think superconductivity is beautiful,
and exciting and un-intuitive.
-: Yeah, right?
-: Non-intuitive, that's the word I'm looking for.
-: And it's quantum mechanics at our scale.
-: Yeah, at the scale (Bradley whooshing)
of your tummy, right. -: I just did a mind blowing.
-: So explain what superconductivity is
for those who may not know.
-: So, superconductivity and its cousin superfluidity,
is basically what happens as things get colder and colder,
is that they organize themselves differently,
and this reorganization of the electrons in one case,
and of the atoms in another,
allows them to travel freely through materials.
That's why in a superconductor,
the resistivity drops to zero.
And in a superconductor, for example,
and they've done these experiments,
and I don't remember how long.
In a superconductor, you can send in a current
with a source, a battery.
Then you can close the superconducting loop,
take the battery away,
and measure how long the current lives
in the superconductor, and it can live forever.
Well, I don't know about forever,
but it can live a long time.
-: So it's kinda like a normal material would be,
like, a mosh pit at a heavy metal concert,
whereas superconductivity-
Shireen: Yes, but superconductor is formal.
-: Would be like line dancing.
Shireen: No, it's extremely.
-: Formal.
They pair up, and then they're all on ice.
-: They're very, yes,
they can move smoothly through things
but without bumping, yes.
-: The dancing analogy,
we have a Funsize Physics
post about that. -: Yes, that's very cool.
We have a Funsize Physics post.
Go look for it. -: Yes.
We will link to it in the episode description.
So for more on superconductivity and superfluidity,
which is- -: Yes, and we have
superfluidity on Funsize Physics too.
-: So here, we're like the anti-molasses, right?
-: Yeah, the superfluids, yeah. -: That was a phrase used in
one of our posts where there- -: Yes, I mean, superfluids
just flow anywhere.
They're very beautiful.
-: So zero viscosity, that thickness
that you think of with honey
and other viscous liquids. -: Yes, pouring is very easy.
In fact, I think there's somewhere,
I think we tried to get this.
If you have a superfluid container,
a container with a superfluid,
it'll climb up the sides of the beaker.
-: Yes, I think we do have a video of that.
-: Do we have that video? -: Yes.
I think we have that video. -: That's very cool.
-: It's very cool.
-: So I did my undergraduate here.
I did the, it was the experimental class,
and me and my lab partner,
we finished all of our experiments, so we were done for the,
and we still had a couple weeks left in the semester,
and Herman Batelaan and, us two,
we tried to create a superfluid.
We didn't get the vacuum good enough,
but we tried really hard to.
He even bought helium and everything,
so we tried to do one. -: Really?
It should be pretty easy.
-: Yeah, we didn't, I know. (Jocelyn laughing)
It should be, right? I mean, you can go.
You can make. You can- -: If he bought the helium,
I think that you should be able to do it.
You should be able to pump on it.
I think, yeah. -: You gotta get it down
to about, yeah, 2.7? Shireen: 2, 2.17, yeah.
-: Yeah, somewhere around there, yeah.
-: 2.17 what, Brad?
-: Kelvin.
-: Degrees Kelvin, okay. -: That's how we roll.
-: So we're talking very cold.
-: We don't do Fahrenheit here. -: Yes, no, no.
(Bradley laughing) Just making sure.
So Shireen, besides superconductivity and superfluidity,
what would you say have been some
of the most exciting developments
in condensed matter physics in the last-
-: So going back to superconductivity,
they now have magnetic superconductors.
They've now discovered superconductors
that are also magnetic, and-
-: Everything's better when it's magnetic.
-: No, but this is really exciting
because people used to think that magnetism
and superconductivity could not coexist.
-: Ah, yes. -: And now, you have
magnetic ordering with superconductors,
and that's really exciting,
and- -: Yeah, 'cause the trains.
'Cause now, they can create.
-: Yeah, but it's too cold -: But they're not exactly,
they use more of a diamagnet
right now, correct? (chime tinkling)
-: Yeah, so superconductors -: For the maglev trains
is what I'm talking about. -: are also perfect,
perfect diamagnets.
They expel all field, and there's this experiment
that I want them to try in the experimental lab.
You can cool one of these high-temperature superconductors
down to liquid nitrogens,
and then you can float a magnet above it.
It will just, you know, pushes out
all the magnetic field lines.
-: I think I saw a video of that
on YouTube one time. -: Yeah, there's a video,
but I want them to do it
'cause I think that'd be fun. -: Oh, that'd be fun, yeah.
-: 'Cause they have a chunk
of superconductor, and they have liquid nitrogen, so.
Bradley: Right. (chuckles)
-: What else are you gonna do, I mean
Shireen: If you have those-
-: All of the ingredients are there.
So this all sounds fantastic, and awesome, and cool
and that's what appeals to me
about condensed matter physics, as you know
is just the wow, and the wonder factor.
But, as we've discussed on this podcast before,
condensed matter physics also, and perhaps,
is better known for,
a lot of the electronic applications
that we get out of it.
So in terms of those kinds of things,
the interesting,
new kinds of electronics
and ways of storing data,
what would you say have been the most
significant achievements there
in the last 10 or 20 years?
-: Well, the many, many different ways
that they store magnetic data now,
how they store it, how they read it,
how they write it, and there's more
techniques coming online all the time
this is one of the big questions of our time.
I have a picture somewhere of,
I think it was an Apple memory
in the early 80's.
And you can imagine a cube,
about 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters,
and they've got these little ring magnets
through which they're passing currents,
and they had all of, kilobytes of memory,
I think?
And, so magnets have been a mainstay
of memory circuits, right,
of memories, but, where we have come now,
I mean, now we have terabytes of memory
that's huge amounts of memory, right?
-: And basically you need- -: And cheap!
And cheap!
-: A little chip that can fit in your hand
Shireen: Yeah, and cheap!
-: Cheap, yeah.
And that's the great thing about Moore's law,
it just keeps getting cheaper.
-: I knew Moore's law was gonna come up here,
yes, Brad had to go with Moore's law.
And looking for ways through condensed matter physics,
basically sort of reinventing matter itself
to try to overcome this.
-: That's true, that's true because
people now have a toolbox of magic materials
in some sense, that do things
that you wouldn't think they would.
And they have a toolbox of being able
to make things very thin, or very small
and their behavior is very different than it would be
if you had a chunk of it in your pocket.
So yeah, our toolbox has expanded tremendously.
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