Public lecture by Charles W. Clark
Much of what we understand about the world comes from our eyes, which sense the colors from red to violet that are expressed in the rainbow.
Yet we know that this patch of colors is just a small island in the vast electromagnetic spectrum, which extends from radio waves to gamma rays. Two invisible regions of great importance to us are those just over and just under the rainbow - the infrared and ultraviolet, respectively. These were discovered about 200 years ago in inspired experiments that anyone can understand, originally conducted by Frederick William Herschel and Johann Wilhelm Ritter. Only recently has it come to be understood that a variety of animals live in a visual world totally unfamiliar to us, particularly in the ultraviolet.
The ultraviolet is a realm fundamentally ruled by quantum physics, and the scene of a discovery that laid the foundation of the quantum theory of matter. The birds and the bees seem unaware of this, but they make fruitful use of it every day.
Biography
Charles W. Clark is an atomic, molecular and optical physicist. A Fellow of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Clark is the Physical Sciences Editor of the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions and co-editor of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He is also Fellow and former Co-Director of the Joint Quantum Institute, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Maryland. In collaboration with Victor Galitski, Clark designed and taught the Coursera course, "Exploring Quantum Physics". His research interests include quantum computing and communication, atomtronics, and neutron detection and interferometry.
Tickets
Register for your complimentary tickets.
Parking
Visitor parking is available in lot M for $6
Ticket holders must be in their seats no later than 15 minutes prior to the start of the lecture. After this time, guests in the waiting line will be invited into the theatre to fill any empty seat.