Physics Fun - With a Master

Jan 08, 01:36 PM

Describing a mathematical equation as "pretty" may seem slightly odd to some, but the word falls time and time again from the lips of Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics.

It's the beauty of the equations, and what that means for everyday people and the universe, that Professor Wilczek will try to convey in a public lecture at Te Manawa next week.

He promises the lecture, entitled The Universe is a Strange Place, will be a good show, even if your knowledge of physics stops at the point of knowing there was a guy named Einstein who did something important once.

It's the structure of equations that makes them pretty, he explains in a down-to-earth American drawl that belies the passion of the words he uses to describe the subject he has made history in.

A good equation is like a musical masterpiece or a work of art, he says.

"If you changed a note it would be diminished, and if you changed a phrase the whole structure would fall apart. That gets to the essence of what the nature of beauty is," he says.

"You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll go out (of the Te Manawa lecture) and appreciate the world much more than when you came in," he espouses.

"I'm only kidding about the crying part, you probably won't cry."

He tries to make physics entertaining.

"There are some jokes, and some fantastic pictures that are the deep structure of reality, and it should be accessible to everyone. You'll learn things you probably didn't know about "

And, he promises, there will be no serious equations - no matter how pretty.

* Frank Wilczek has received many prizes for his work in physics, including the Nobel Prize of 2004 for graduate student work at Princeton University in the 1970's, when he was just 21. He is known, among other things, for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, the development of quantum chromodynamics, axions, andanyons.

* The public lecture will be held at Te Manawa at 5.30pm on Tuesday, January 15.

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(c) 2008 Evening Standard; Palmerston North, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Physics Fun - With a Master
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