UofT Physics: 2015 H.L. Welsh Lectures in Physics
The Department of Physics invites faculty, students and the public to our 40th annual celebration of physics.
The Welsh Lectures in Physics have been held annually since 1975 in honour of H.L. Welsh, a distinguished former faculty member in the Physics Department. They are the major public event in the life of the Department of Physics and are intended to celebrate discoveries in physics and their wider impact. They are intended to be broadly accessible to an audience drawn from across the university, other academic institutions and the interested public.
1:30pm Welcome and opening remarks: Prof. Stephen Julian, Chair, Department of Physics
1:45pm Prof. William Bialek: "More perfect than we imagined: A physicist's view of life"
Sitting in a quiet room, we can hear sounds that cause our eardrums to vibrate by less than the diameter of an atom. When bacteria have to decide if they are swimming in the right direction to find more food, they count every single molecule that arrives at their surface. In these examples, and many more, evolution has selected for mechanisms that operate near the limits of what is allowed by the laws of physics. This lecture will give a tour of these beautiful phenomena, from microscopic events inside a developing embryo to our own perception and decision making. While there are many ways to build a biological system that might work, there are many fewer ways to build one that can approach the physical limits. Perhaps, out of its complexity, life emerges as simpler, and more perfect, than we imagined.
3:00pm Coffee Break
3:30pm Prof. Serge Haroche: "Power and strangeness of the quantum"
Quantum theory has allowed us to understand in depth the microscopic world, leading to technologies which have revolutionised our lives (computers, lasers, magnetic resonance imaging, atomic clocks...). And yet, in spite of its successes, quantum physics seems strange and counterintuitive to the layman and even to the physicist. It describes a world in which the concepts of wave and particles are deeply intertwined, leading to the bizarre notions of state superposition and entanglement. At the macroscopic level, these odd phenomena are veiled by the process of decoherence which imparts to the world its classical appearance. Recent technological advances have allowed us to control and observe isolated quantum systems such as atoms, molecules, photons or superconducting microchips. These manipulations reveal directly the most counterintuitive aspects of the quantum behaviour. Beyond their fundamental interest, they open fascinating perspectives for new applications in which the quantum strangeness will be directly harnessed to achieve tasks in communication and computing that are impossible to perform with devices relying on classical logic.
4:30pm Closing remarks: Prof. Dylan Jones, Chair of the Welsh Lectures Committee
Reception with the speakers afterwards.
Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Reservations: Not required
Organized by: University of Toronto Department of Physics
Location: Earth Sciences Centre Auditorium, ES 1050, 5 Bancroft Avenue, Toronto