I had an interesting conversation with a colleague last week about the challenges of writing a broadly appealing, popular book about condensed matter. This is a topic I've been mulling for (too many) years - see this post from the heady days of 2010.
He made a case that condensed matter is inherently less wondrous to the typical science-interested person than, e.g., "the God Particle" (blech) or black holes. This is basically my first point in the old post linked above. He was arguing that people have a hard time ever seeing something that captures the imagination in items or objects that they have around them all the time. The smartphone is an incredible piece of technology and physics, but what people care about is how to get better download speeds, not how or why any of it works.
I'm curious: Do readers think this is on-target? Is "lack of wonder" the main issue, or one of many?
I did a Master's degree in materials science and technology before my PhD in physics.
ReplyDeleteI liked the mat sci a lot because I wanted to know about the things around me (basically everything non-natural you see around you was designed, processed, involving a material scientist).
Then I want to understand more, deeper layers and went into cmp.
I think for the stuff around us, it has to be a *wish to understand*, a curiosity, that needs to be present. Whereas for "black holes", I don't believe people like reading about that because they really want to understand, they like to read about that out of a sense of entertainment: everything crazy (because let's be honest, most astro, or particle physics is almost too crazy to be real) attracts these days.
Basically getting the details of the *awe* explained about something you see everyday makes it boring (details), whereas the thing you don't see everyday and that is just plain crazy, had the awe evident from the start. And then it's interesting to read a bit (low level, popularized) of what that crazy stuff is. But it's not a real explanation, real understanding - that would result in a same "boooring" result as explaining cmp.
My two cents.
I'm thinking about my own trajectory into condensed matter physics, how before college I did read A Brief History of Time, and Distrubing the Universe, and Feynman's books, and might well have ended up doing particle physics if things had fallen differently into place. I ended up working as an undergrad first for a high-energy astrophysicist, and while I still think that astrophysics asks fascinating questions, I decided that I wanted to work with real scientific equipment in a real lab, and not just analyze data on a computer.
ReplyDeleteBut although the books were important, I also know that I watched all sorts of popularizations of science on TV, mostly on PBS. Nova, for example. They all used very wondrous language to describe reductionist physics. "Unlocking the secrets of the forces that hold everything together" sounds more exciting than the measurement of some random branching ratio.
So perhaps there first needs to be a dramatic language about the whole project of condensed matter physics, that's repeated in books but also in videos and documentaries and displays at science museums and whenever condensed matter folks talk with school children about what it's like to be a scientist.
And another thing--since I don't actually read popularizations of physics anymore, I'm curious if there are good condensed-matter focused popular books already out there, which haven't made the splash we'd like to see. After seeing Mark Miodownik's APS presentation I'm interested to read his Stuff Matters, but it'd join a very long list of books I'd like to read.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a Veritasium or ActionLab style of YouTube series can grab people's attention far better than a book? After all, the great thing about CMP is you can show cool stuff in action - whether it's turbulence, flocking, superconductivity, ferrofluids, optical stuff, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think this depends very much on whether you adopt a ‘glass-half-full’ or ‘glass-half-empty’ attitude.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, you could lament that CMP is ‘merely’ the science of boring, everyday stuff. From that perspective, astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics and the like are much more exotic and flashier.
But on the other hand, to understand many of the most exotic and mystical phenomena of particle physics and cosmology, it is often useful, and sometimes I think almost necessary, to think like a condensed matter physicist. The most famous example of this is the fact that the Higgs mechanism is essentially mathematically equivalent to superconductivity. But even if we ignore quantum phenomena, when we try to understand the large-scale organization of structure in the universe at a classical level, it is often useful to call upon concepts that I, at least, most frequently associate with nonlinear dynamics and turbulence ( fractals, scaling, self-organization and feedback, etc…). So, from a certain point of view, one could argue that the universe itself is `merely’ an extraordinarily complex many-body quantum system/state of matter.
Some would say that thinking like this makes black holes, elementary particles, and other exotic high-energy/cosmological physics mundane, and ‘ruins’ those fields. But really, I think a much stronger argument can be made that it is a powerful demonstration of the underlying unity of physical law, and how the division between fundamental/exotic and applied/generic phenomena is very much a matter of perspective.
But isn't that the problem? The excitement for cmp only arrives after going into the details.
ReplyDeleteAstro starts with the excitement ("that's crazy, falling into a black hole").
We know (your favorite topic, visible in store xyz) is exciting because (your favorite physics *details*). But those details only come into play after digging into the subject.
Astro starts with something exciting. Details don't matter for the public. They can read, and tune out whenever they had their fill. Tune out in cmp before having reached the bottom of the explanation, and you've missed most or all of the exciting stuff.
There is a reason superconductivity is the cmp subject most close to astro on the "sex appeal"-scale.
@pcs - fair point. I myself am not particularly good or experienced at branding and marketing at a superficial level. I do agree with you that superconductivity has more 'sex-appeal' - perhaps more generally, any exotic or flashy sounding quantum state of matter might be able to ignite the lay-person's curiosity. If you just throw out words/phrases like Fractionalization, Topological Superconductivity, Quantum Spin Liquids, maybe that might help lure people in?
ReplyDeleteThe point is that fractionalization and quantum spin liquids are not"wow" - until you dig deeper. And by then we've lost a lot of audience.
Delete(Is my opinion)
I disagree. I think they are quite exotic sounding and flashy.
DeleteAmong all the areas of physics, Cosmology engenders the greatest sense of wonder. But Condensed Matter wins the "What the Hell is that good for?" test ... hands-down. So I figure it all balances out in the end.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with pcs overall that the excitement in CMP tends to come more from the details than the big picture. I recently experienced this with an astrophysics faculty candidate who visited my department. After she explained her (honestly quite exciting) multi-messenger astrophysics program, I tried to explain mine: "so we have these magnets ... and when we cool them down ... singlets form ... and exchange is anisotropic so...". I quickly saw I was losing her... So I took her to the lab instead and what I found worked best was to show crystals and explain how we develop large-scale tools to explore these materials (in that case the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge). One strategy I have adopted to get folks (especially undergraduates) interested is to start with the equipment aspect: low temperatures, neutron sources, modern x-ray machines that look quite sci-fi, and then explain that thanks to all these tools (developed over the last 120 years) we realized that materials realize different flavors of quantum field theories and that these QFTs are the fundamental nature of the universe ... so really using the "Materials Multiverse" idea of that paper by B. Powell: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat7282
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if the extensive popular science articles/books about cosmology and particle physics comes from the differences in grant opportunities. In my interdisciplinary area of physics, I'm spitting out grants monthly and have flexibility with my techniques to study the "everyday" materials and collaborate with material scientists and engineers. While my colleagues in the "pure physics" areas of cosmology and particle physics are more on an annual schedule of sending out grants within their niche specialization. So having time to make the public excited about your work is the way to keep it relevant when your not bogged down with applications; ensuring there is interest and justification for the little funding available is worth your time.
ReplyDeleteBut overall I think all scientists could do a better job at making their work "exciting" to the public. The current distrust of scientists during the pandemic has emphasized this.
Astrophysics and particle physics connect us to some deeply philosophical questions: why are we here? why is there something rather than nothing? is the universe a mathematical necessity, or just one of many possible universes? We won't answer any of these questions, but will keep asking them until the end of time.
ReplyDeleteFor CMP, I can think of quantum computers, which generate some public fascination (have you seen "Devs"?).
Not a physicist (aerospace engineer instead) but I try to keep up with aspects of physics, hopefully at a level a little bit more detailed than typical so-called “popular physics” books. (In particular, Michio Kaku is right out.) As some examples, the Susskind “Theoretical Minimum” series has been very interesting and even useful, but is definitely more than typical “popular physics”.
ReplyDeleteIn the at-least-partly condensed matter area, I really enjoyed Robert Laughlin’s A Different Universe, both for the engaging writing style and the topics. I’d definitely be interested in more condensed matter physics along those lines.