Daily Archives: May 19, 2020

Claude Greisler, co-founder and technical director of Armin Strom, talks resonance with watch collector Michael J. Biercuk, professor of quantum physics and technology at the University of Sydney and CEO and founder of Q-CTRL.

Quantum physics and technology laboratory at the University of Sydney

In this interesting discussion, which took place in Sydney, Greisler and Biercuk discuss what resonance is and what the advantages are. Biercuk also notes that resonance is not watchmaking specific and explains where its found in daily life as well as how its used in quantum physics.

The discussion is easy to understand and provides a light and entertaining look at Armin Stroms signature complicated element.

For more information, please visit http://www.arminstrom.com.

Armin Strom Gravity Equal Force: Invention Is No Accident, Or How To Start Fresh

Armin Strom Minute Repeater Resonance: Synchronized Oscillations Driving Sonorous Vibrations (Plus Video It Sounds Fantastic!)

Armin Strom Masterpiece 1 Dual Time Resonance: Simplifying With Complexity

Understanding Resonance, Featuring The F.P. Journe Chronomtre Rsonance, Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance, And Haldimann H2 Flying Resonance

A Watchmakers Technical Look At The Mirrored Force Resonance Fire By Armin Strom: A Dual-Balance Watch With A Difference

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Armin Strom Discusses Resonance With PhD Of Quantum Physics And Watch Collector In An Easy-To-Understand Way (Video) - Quill & Pad

May 18, 2020

Editor's note:This story is part of a series of profiles ofnotable spring 2020 graduates.

Weighing the pros and cons, considering multiple variables, and a little bit of faith all roll into deciding where to pursue higher education. Fortunately for Department of Physics graduate Tanner Wolfram, the choice was simple. Wolfram enjoyed many travel opportunities during his undergraduate years. Photo courtesy of Tanner Wolfram. Download Full Image

An award-winning and published student, Wolfram is part of the third generation in his family to graduate from Arizona State University.

My family came to ASU forever, Wolfram said. My grandmother came here when I think it was still called Arizona State College. My mom went here, all of her sisters, my dad, and I think one of his siblings.

With such a rich history in his own family, Wolfram has had a front-row seat on ASU's evolution through decades of family stories.

My grandmother talks about how the original Palm Walk used to be different; she called it a small school, he said.

Patricia Reagan, Wolframs maternal grandmother, attended Arizona State College in 1953, before the 1958 vote to change the school name to the one we are used to today. And, in the past 60 years, that small school has sky-rocketed to a sprawling, innovative New American University with nearly 120,000 students spread across four campuses and several locations.

Thats one of the coolest things for me to see, maybe, being here just a little longer than a lot of students, said Wolfram. I got to see so many new buildings and so many new research areas develop here at ASU. To hear about them through emails, and things from the campus, and just to hear about all the progressions ASU is making, thats pretty cool."

Through family involvement in campus activities over the years, Wolfram saw the Tempe campus shift and evolve through his parents' eyes, listening to their stories and commentary on changes and new elements. Both his parents graduated from ASU in 1984.

When asked which changes seemed most remarkable, Wolframs father, Scott Wolfram, said, The addition of the whole science complex with Biodesign, theSchool of Earth and Space Explorationand then the addition of Barrett.

I think the new architectural designs are really beautiful. I also love the plant life that accents the campus, said Wolframs mother, Deborah Estrada. Im also really pleased that there are many places for the students to eat and hang out.

Wolframs earliest memory of ASU is of walking around the Tempe campus with his mother, who brought him to see the sights and also to participate in various campus activities for children, from bowling to violin lessons.

My mom says that the first thing I did at ASU was be part of the psychology child study lab. Obviously, I dont remember this, since I was something like 3 or 4, he said.

Wolfram remembers spending plenty of time in the Bateman Physical Sciences Center during events like ASUs Open Door, and Earth and Space Exploration Day. Fitting, then, that this is the building where he would spend so much time as a physics student.

Wolfram enjoys a broad range of interests and passions and loves to learn. In addition to school and community activities, both at ASU and otherwise, he grew up watching the Science Channel. As time went on and people started asking him what he wanted to do after graduation, he noticed a definite pattern in his favorite shows programs like Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Star Talk" and "How the Universe Works" heavily featured expert guests to explore varying topics.

I kept seeing their titles: astrophysicist, astrophysicist, Wolfram said.

He started as an astrophysics major, but soon switched to physics, not wanting to specialize too early.

I think that is the key, I really wanted a big foundation in physics, he said.

This foundation would help keep his options open and give him the freedom to explore his varied interests without the pressure of locking into a lifelong career path.

Wolfram likes options and has many interests besides his love of physics. In addition to his physics coursework, he enjoyed a wide range of extracurricular activities and completed two foreign language minors, Spanish and Chinese, and participated in a study abroad program in China.

He is very interested in politics, language, learning about new cultures and international relations. His many travel opportunities during his undergraduate years gave him insight, perspective and new experiences that he cant wait to take with him into whatever life holds in store next.

Building his solid foundation in physics, Wolfram also found new interests in his major. One of his favorite subjects, and perhaps his proudest accomplishment, was completing the full undergraduate quantum coursework including acing the notoriously difficult Quantum Physics III.

That one I worked really hard for, he said. It was a hard class. It was areallyhard class. The tests are very challenging; its very demanding. Im glad in the end that I had done enough to get the A.

Despite the level of difficulty, or perhaps because of it, Wolfram found he quite enjoyed abstract and theoretical topics.

Ive always liked things that are a little abstract, a little not-so-here, not so physical, he said. Problems and questions often stayed on his mind for weeks afterward.

I think I like the thinking side of it, he said. Just kind of sit with myself and ponder. You know, probably those were my favorite classes.

He also appreciated the close friendships formed with his classmates, as they all took on such challenging courses together.

I have to say, I really like the department here, thats a really big thing, said Wolfram.

It was a lot of fun because we would all be in the same classes. You know, we worked together, we generally studied together, so that was always fun, and kept things very interesting learning things with them and from them. That was one of the things I really liked about ASU.

Wolfram is currently considering graduate programs. Is there a chance he will end up moving into astrophysics, the topic that launched his undergraduate journey? Perhaps. He certainly hasnt lost his curiosity about the universe.

When asked what project he would tackle if suddenly gifted $40 million, he said he would devote it to furthering space exploration.

My personal viewpoint is that we have a lot of time (hopefully) here on Earth, but I think we should also spend part of that time trying to explore farther out, try to make new worlds, and new things, he said.

Thats probably way far in the distant future, he said. But if thats something I could have helped work on, getting people to different worlds even if I only contributed a little, minor thing that would be interesting.

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Embedded in the community: Outstanding physics student is a third-generation ASU student - ASU Now

R. Laughlin, Phys. Rev. B (1981)

R. Laughlin, Phys. Rev. B (1981)

Take a strip of metal, run an electrical current through it, and then pierce the strip with a magnetic field. The moving charges will veer off to the sides, producing a so-called Hall voltage that should go up continuously as the field is made stronger or the current higher.

However, a repeat of this basic experiment when the temperature was very low, the strip very flat, and the field very strong revealed an astounding effect. Instead of changing continuously, the voltage only budged in quantized steps, plateauing at an extremely precise value in between. Those steps, reported in 1980, showed that the Hall conductivity (the ratio of the current to the Hall voltage) could only assume integer multiples of e2h.

Whats striking about the Hall conductivity is that its insensitive to impurities. That feature suggested the quantum Hall effect (QHE) was due to a fundamental principle, wrote Robert Laughlin, then at Bell Labs, in an elegant 1981 paperone of the first to explain the QHE. The principle turned out to be the gauge invariance of localized and extended electronic states. Laughlins insight provided the groundwork for his explanation of another exceptional result, the 1982 observation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. (For this theoretical work, Laughlin was awarded the 1998 Nobel prize.)

The quantum Hall system came to be known as the first example of a topological material, which has properties that remain constant despite some continuously changing parameter, like an external field. Physicists have since uncovered numerous other forms of such materials, such as topological insulators, which might be useful for hosting robust qubits for quantum computing. Since 2005, Physical Review B alone has published more than 5000 papers that mention topological insulators. The vast interest in the topic today was unpredictable, says Laughlin, now at Stanford University. Realizing the possibility of topological insulators, he adds, took a confluence of unlikely events and actions made by other people.

One scientist who jumped in was Taylor Hughes, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. When I first started working in this field in 2005, we were really concerned that topological insulators were just a theorists playground, he says. However, in the last 15 years, so many new topological materials have been predicted and discovered that it is almost easier these days to list things that arent topological! (See more on this topic in this 2015 Q&A with Hughes, Topologically Speaking.)

R. B. Laughlin, Quantized Hall conductivity in two dimensions, Phys. Rev. B 23, 5632(R) (1981).

Jessica Thomas is the Editor of Physics.

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50 Years of Physical Review B: Solid Hits in Condensed Matter Research - Physics