Message to the Physics Community, Monday, April 27, 2020

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Dear Physics Community,

Done bingeing? – “Homeland” ended last night (but I have not watched it yet), “Better Call Saul” is done, and you’ve binged, “Ozark”, “Billions”, “The Good Place”, “Wolf Hall” and just cannot get in to “Dispatches from Elsewhere”, and when is “Lodge 49” coming back?  Try this opera!  Courtesy of Hale Bradt.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Articles related to re-starts at other colleges:

New working group: Academic Policy and Regulation Team – faculty, officers, CUP, CAP, COC chairs+ others to work out academic regulations.  Replaces EARS team that worked out P/NR during the shutdown.  Several things under consideration:

  • Pre-registration – normally Friday, delayed until mid-June, most probably
  • Grad. admissions yield – unchanged at the school level, except Sloan which was down a little.
  • Graduate deferrals – handled at Department or program level.
  • Subject evaluation – most likely two parts: experience survey (similar to Quality of life survey) and subject-specific with open-ended questions.  Instructors will not be evaluated and this term’s evaluations will not be used in tenure decisions.

Our input on Fall restart teaching scenarios is coming…

Physics Department

Hubble crisis update – In the Fall, Adam Reese gave a colloquium about measuring the Hubble constant locally and at cosmological distances and getting results that differed well outside of errors.  A new Quanta article talks about theoretical work to explain how this might happen. I’m putting my money on a new measurement of the Hubble constant that LIGO will make in the coming years.  Scott Hughes invented the method with others and wrote a Physics Today article about it.  The paper is here.  Stay tuned.

Aerosols – an aerosol consists of droplets or particles that are small enough so that they do not fall and can remain suspends for hours in are, circulating with the local airflow.  This article gives data on airborne SAR-COV-2 measured in China.  Makes me think we should be requiring fluid dynamics.

Los Endos

Too cool! – the Shelter in Place Gallery

Peter