PHYS 214 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

James Scholar Assignment #1

Remember: You must choose (and stick with) one of the two tracks.

All summaries or essays must be 1.5 - 2 pages long, single-spaced, 12 point font (PDF, TEXT, or Microsoft Word 2003 or later). Please include your name and NetID on your paper.

Track A: Read the first chapter of "QED" by Feynman (available in bookstores, Amazon, etc.) and write an essay, making connection with the topics we covered in class, and comparing/contrasting the different approaches.

Track B: Misc. Applications: LIGO, a scientific and engineering "miracle" that HAS happened!
First, watch the quite excellent NSF-produced 20-minute video on LIGO:

LIGO video1

Next, watch the video of the LIGO founders discussing LIGO's first direct detection of gravitational waves on September 14, 2015:

LIGO video2

You can also read the official summary of this amazing breakthrough here (https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/media_files/binaries/301/original/detection-science-summary.pdf

(Note: the journal article announcing this detection event can be found at https://physics.aps.org/featured-article-pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102.)

You might enjoy the following short video that discusses the limitations of LIGO and how to stretch them:

LIGO video3

Finally, look at the following article regarding updates associated with Advanced LIGO:

 

Finally, write a summary of LIGO, how it works, what objects and events it's designed to observe, and what upgrades involved with Advanced LIGO helped to enable the observation of gravitational waves.

Upload your paper to https://my.physics.illinois.edu/courses/upload/ by the deadline.

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