Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Carl Wieman at Boise State Thursday Night

Dr. Carl Wieman, who won the Nobel Prize in physics, will be speaking tomorrow (Thursday) at Boise State in the Distinguished Lecture Series.  Wieman offers a framework of relevant, effective education for students. 

Wieman, a professor at Stanford University, teamed with Eric Allin Cornell for the first true Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).  In 2001, Wieman, Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle were awarded the Nobel Prize.

A BEC is a state of matter of a dilute gas of bosons cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (or -273.16 degrees Celsius).  Under those conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, at which point macroscopic quantum phenomena become apparent.

Bose-Einstein statistics theorizes the characteristics of elementary particles.  Bosons are one of two classes of particles.  Absolute zero is thought to be the lowest possible temperature.  A quantum state refers to a state of an isolated quantum system (a portion of the whole Universe which is taken under consideration to make analysis or to study for quantum mechanics pertaining to the wave-particile duality in that system and everything outside this system is studied only to observe its effects on the system).

Presented by the Boise State Honors College, Wieman will speak Thursday night at 7 in the Student Union Building.