Entries tagged physics | Hugonweb Annotated Link Bibliography

Noether's theorem and Newton's Laws

https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0206210

A 2026 Physics Teacher paper by Eugene Hecht. Hecht wrote my intro physics textbook back in 2000.

I'm not sure the connection of Noether's theorem and Newton's laws is convincing, but the conceptual discussion of Noether's theorem is great.

Recall that invariance relates to the unchanging state of a quantity transferred between reference frames. Conservation relates to the unchanging state of a quantity in time, within a given reference frame. The two concepts are not equivalent.

I hadn't compared invariance and conservation before, and this is nice to think about.

Focusing on the [physics] concepts by covering them simultaneously

https://doi.org/10.1119/1.4981034

This is a Physics Teacher paper by Pete Schwartz. Parallel pedagogy sounds especially nice for conceptual physics. I’m not sure how to join it to non-mechanics topics.

Gamma ray spectroscopy in introductory physics

https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0254324

An article in The Physics Teacher by Jim Pantaleone about using an inexpensive gamma ray spectrometer in introductory lab. Example activities include measuring the radioactivity of a bag of potassium chloride pellets, observing backscatter from a lab table of a cesium-137 source, and estimating the efficiency of the spectrometer with a chunk of uranium ore.

MCAT chemical and physical foundations of biological systems section: foundational concept 4

https://students-residents.aamc.org/chemical-and-physical-foundations-biological-systems/chemical-and-physical-foundations-biological-systems-section-foundational-concept-4

This is a link to what the MCAT physics section is looking for. Useful for college physics-level teaching.

Van de Graaff Electrostatic Generator Page

http://amasci.com/emotor/vdg.html

Bill Beaty's page on Van de Graaf generators. Make sure to look at page 2 and the other electrostatic pages.

Demystifying graviton detection

https://physicstoday.aip.org/features/demystifying-graviton-detection

Physics today article on how experimental graviton detection may be possible. The key insight is to use macroscopic quantum systems as detectors, rather than relying on planet-sized masses of individual atoms. The main challenge seems to be scaling up quantum systems from milligram scale to gram or kilogram scale.

Entropy as the geometric mean of partitioning: A pedagogical derivation from effective state counting

https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0330859

This is a much more intuitive way of explaining partitioning compared to combinatorics.

The millisecond that could change cancer treatment

https://spectrum.ieee.org/flash-radiotherapy

"FLASH radiotherapy" is a technique being developed at Institut Curie in Orsay, CERN, and Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) to give a patient a whole course of radiation dose on the order of a millisecond. Somehow, the intense dose on the short timescale kills the tumor worse than the surrounding healthy tissue. Interesting note that no experiments can be conducted on living things at CERN, that's why they need CHUV's help.

A quantum-inspired classical algorithm for recommendation systems

https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04271

By Tang, Ewin

Interesting that the quantum algorithm inspired an equally performant classical one.

See also Tang's paper published in PRL: arXiv:1811.00414 (cs)

Oracle Separation of BQP and PH

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3530258

A paper showing that there are problems quantum computers solve that aren't even solvable by a generalization of NP in classical computers.

Freely available here

Muometric positioning system (μPS) with cosmic muons as a new underwater and underground positioning technique (2020)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75843-7

Using the time of flight of relativistic cosmic ray muons to estimate relative position.

There is also a 2024 paper on a more practical, wireless system and another on time synchronization from 2022.

Here is the author, Hiroyuki K.M. Tanaka's inspirehep page.

Emergence of collective oscillations in massive human crowds

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08514-6

Observational study of crowds with interesting modeling and analysis.