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OLLI HomePage Please Note: All study groups and shared interest groups are subject to the oversubscription lottery. Request offering means that the class is subject to the lottery. We will run the lottery on 1/10 and send out notifications by 1/13. You will then be asked to go in and pay for any classes you got into. Payment for study groups and shared interest groups will not show until the lottery concludes. > Study Groups > Science Pop-Up Talks

Science Pop-Up Talks   

 
  • Science Pop-Up: Good Vibrations: The Interplay of Music and Physics
  • Fee: $12.00
    Dates: 1/30/2025 - 1/30/2025
    Times: 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
    Days: Th
    Sessions: 1
    Building: Online only
    Room:
    Instructor:

    Abstract:

    Scholars and musicians from the ancient Greeks to modern times have asked questions about music: Why do we find the combination of certain pitches pleasing?  Why do two different instruments play the same note sound different?  Can musical instruments be improved (and what would that mean)?  The answers to these questions arise from the profound connections between music and physics.  I will elucidate some principles of musical acoustics and explore how they affect the way instruments work and how we experience musical sound.  In doing so I will draw on my background as a physicist and a musician, and on my experience co-teaching a course on the subject with a professional musician.

     

    Bio:

    Laurie McNeil is the Bernard Gray Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She earned an A.B. in Chemistry and Physics from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  After two years as an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT she joined the faculty at UNC-CH in 1984.  She serves as a Deputy Editor at the Journal of Applied Physics.  Prof. McNeil is a materials physicist who uses optical spectroscopy to investigate the properties of semiconductors and insulators.  She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and has received the 2019 George B. Pegram Award from the Southeastern Section of APS for excellence in the teaching of physics as well as the 2025 J.D. Jackson Award for Excellence in Graduate Education from the American Association of Physics Teachers.  Together with a colleague in the Department of Music at UNC-CH she teaches a course on the physics of musical instruments.



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  • Science Pop-Up: The Biography of a Black Hole: How an Idea Once Hated by Physicists Came to Be Loved
  • Fee: $12.00
    Dates: 1/16/2025 - 1/16/2025
    Times: 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
    Days: Th
    Sessions: 1
    Building: Online only
    Room:
    Instructor:

    Abstract:

    For more than half a century, physicists and astronomers engaged in heated dispute over the possibility of black holes in the universe. The strange notion of a space-time abyss from which no light can escape seemed to confound all logic. This lecture will recount the frustrating, exhilarating, and at times humorous battles over the years as physicists, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, wrestled with this dazzling idea. Bartusiak will show how the black hole helped revive Einstein’s greatest achievement, the general theory of relativity, after decades of languishing in obscurity. Not until astronomers discovered such surprising new phenomena as neutron stars and quasars did the once-sedate universe transform into an Einsteinian cosmos, filled with both black holes and sources of titanic energy that can be understood only in the light of relativity.

     

    Bio:

    Combining her undergraduate training in journalism at American University with a master’s degree in physics from Old Dominion University, Marcia Bartusiak has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for more than four decades. A Professor of the Practice Emeritus in the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she is the author of seven books on astrophysics and the history of astronomy, including Black Hole,  Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony on gravitational-wave astronomy (winner of the 2001 American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award) and The Day We Found the Universe (winner of the History of Science Society's Davis Prize). In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, cited for “exceptionally clear communication of the rich history, the intricate nature, and the modern practice of astronomy to the public at large.”



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