Local independent bookstore. We are excited to have our guest tonight. Technically the store closes at 8 00 p. M. But we will keep a register open and you will be able to exit the building out the back parking lot here. A perk. On to tonights guest, the taylor professor and he has served as the science consultant on movies such as watchman and the amazing spider man. His latest book, the physics of everyday things, was published by crown last week and that welcome be in joining james kakalios. We will be back with more live coverage from the eighth annual gaithersburg book thank you very much. Joe. Thank you to the University Bookstore for hosting this event and thank you everyone for coming indoors on a beautiful may day to sit inside and listen to talk about physics. You are my kind of, nerds. [laughter] we live our lives surrounded by the most amazing technologies such as, usb drives that can store entire libraries, are smart phones which far exceed the capabilities of anything imagined in star trek, in the star trek communicators. Our touchscreens that we have everywhere, the security at tsa; Magnetic Resonance imaging where they can see inside your body without a cut of a knife; microwave ovens that cook our food in fractions of the time a conventional oven does. These devices, how they work, it seems like magic. I felt that it was very important as a physics professor that i explained to the public that it really is magic. [laughter] now, i dont mean magic like Doctor Strange from Marvel Comics with the all seeing eye but rather magic like penn and teller magic show at las vegas. There is the fantastic affects and not breaking the laws of physics, they are exploiting the laws of exit six. Using them to create their illusions. These devices use physics to do what they do. Magicians dont like to tell their secrets but professors, you cant get them to shut up. So, in the physics of everyday things i describe how everything from your fitment wrist fitness monitor works to highspeed elevators, things as conventional as airplanes to more esoteric like voice untreated noise canceling headphones. As mentioned, ive written Popular Science books the physics of superheroes came out about ten years ago and that was followed out by the amazing story of Quantum Mechanics which i took as the premise that we are in the 21st century and we were promised jet packs and flying cars and we got cell phones and laptop heaters instead. Really what happened was the writers of the sciencefiction pulp bought that in the future we have a revolution in energy which is what you need in order to let the car up off the ground and keep it off the ground. We got instead was a revolution in information. That information revolution is made possible by Semi Conductor physics which in turn is made possible by close of mechanics. The physics of superheroes went into a second edition with more heroes, more villains and more science and just last week, as mentioned, the physics of everyday things came out in front. Before i get to that let me give a little background about how did a mildmannered physics professor become associate with spiderman and superman. In my day job the experimentalist so experiment this means i work in laboratory opposed to doing theory and finance matters of a way of saying solidstate physics. My research actually goes from the nano to the neuro. We do work with Semi Conductors where we make nano crystals. These are crystal and germanium and they have diameters of a few nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter effectively the length of three atoms linked to end. You can make a crystal with a diameter of three oh nanometers and that will only have 200 atoms and 140 atoms will be on the service and these crystals are so small that the electrons actually feel there inside a box. The properties of the Material Change simply by changing the size of the nano crystal. Thats great because frequently if you want to change the properties of the material you had to add other elements and make other compounds. Right now if you have another. [inaudible] it frees us from the tyranny of chemistry. [laughter] we make nano crystal light from one Semi Conductor and we invent them into a matrix of another Semi Conductor and readiness to try to make superior cells or transistors and then i have another project right collaborate with professors of neuroscience where we use the techniques we developed to study electronic noise and apply them to voltage fluctuations in the brain. Thats not why im here tonight. Here tonight because back in 2001 i created a freshman seminar class in the university of minnesota that was originally called everything i know about science and learned from reading comic books which my calyx essay explains a great deal. This is a real physics class that covers everything from isaac newton to the transistor but theres not an inkling plane or pulley insight. These examples come from superhero, books and is much as possible when superheroes get their science rights. I illustrate here in action comic that i bought back in the 60s when it first came out with a grand total of 12 cents and im very old. [laughter] in the story, superman visits a College Campus and as a kid, i was interested in what life in college would be like. Perhaps i had some premonition that i would never get out. As a kid, i do this part wasnt correct but there were things in the comic that did turn out to be accurate portrayals of life at the university. For example, all professors at all times always wear caps and gowns and all professors are 800 yearold white man. [laughter] now, the class the first time was in first fall 2001 in the spring of 2002 the first spiderman movie, the one directed by sam and toby require was about to open. I thought this would be an Good Opportunity to get science into the newspaper. I wrote up a story about how a key incident in the spiderman, quark, the death of gwen stacy spidermans girlfriend in, as you all know, amazing spiderman number 121 turns out to be a textbook illustration of forces and momentum. I wrote up the story and was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the friday that the spiderman movie open and the university put out a little press release because of this article. Well, spiderman is on the big screen but if you want to know about the science of superheroes the person to ask is about Professor James teaches a special seminar. The university put out press releases about me before and about my work on Semi Conductors and electronic noise and the result was zero. You write one story about spiderman, however, so this came out on friday and the movie open on friday in the press release went out on friday by monday there were calls from cnn, bbc, the london times, the Associated Press came to my office where i just happen to have these lecture demonstrations. [laughter] that was a lucky break. You know, at this stage in my career, ive reconciled myself to the fact that i could win three nobel prizes and i know what photo theyre using and my obituary. [laughter] i say this to my colleagues and they say when three nobel prizes how, in a crap game . This article actually went around the country and this is a clipping actually from the chicago suntimes that my sisterinlaw sent me and heres a clipping from turkey where one of the graduate students sent me where i think there i know what theyre saying about me then i started showing up in places that physics professors dont usually appear. So, this coming weekend, if youre playing a family game night, say youre playing trivial pursuit and you have volume six, i will tell you right now that if you get card 291 the science question, the answer is correct on. The question is what planets gravity to science Professor James say calculator the force to leap over building in a single bound. Now, i didnt even know about this but one of the graduate students of unit diversity of minnesota brought it to my attention, so i piled the card it went down to the Physics Department main office and went to my Department Chairman and showed him the card and said allen, who is the most famous scientist you know mark he looked at the card and he looked at me and he said steven hawking. [laughter] and hes not a genius, well, then it is you. In the physics of superheroes we use details of superheroes superpowers themselves are obviously not physically justifiable and i dont see my job as being a doctor and this could never happen and this is impossible and what the deal with the hogs pants anyway, unstable molecules. I grant each character a onetime miracle invention from the laws of nature and say well, if you were superstrong orchid stretch like rubber band or run at superspeed like the flash, could you run across the ocean or up the side of the building or snatch bullets in midair all things that the characters are shown doing in the comic books and once you make the suspension of disbelief. Uses superheroes to show basic principles and i show how the physical principles apply to real life and we start off way we do in a standard physics book with newtons law of motion, conservation of energy and we eventually build up to thermodynamics we build up to more modern topics. That wasnt going to work in the physics of everyday things. Very few devices use just newtons law of motion or one bit of physics. Rather, the physics of everyday things we have narrative something that my editor coins narrative physics where you are the superhero and we follow you as you have the amazing pics adventure of an ordinary day. Throughout the day, whenever you interact with any technology, any devices, eyepopping and explain how it works. Hopefully by the end of the book, youll start to develop your own physics intuition and will be able to try to guess how things are working. And notice them around you and say i totally knew it was going to be a capacitor or Something Like that. When you look at the table of contents of the book its almost like a fun with dick and jane premise. It starts off chapter one, you begin your day. You get up in the alarm on your smart phone goes off and you tap the screen and you make breakfast. You brush your teeth with electric toothbrush then, chapter two, you drive into the city, you get into your hybrid automobile and you navigate using gps and use that to the towline at the highway using your easy pass and use the self parking picture in your car and explain the physics. You go to the doctor, he takes her temperature with a digital thermometer, xray, ultrasound, david talk about Magnetic Resonance in imaging and explain how that works. Then you go to the airport. You picked out your ticket, you go through tsa, you have all the screening done to you and then you take a slight. Youre in the airplane, you take a digital photograph of a cloud and you try to upload the cloud and the person next to you is wearing noise canceling headphones and then you get to where youre going and you get a business presentation to use an lcd. Injector or laser pointer or microphone and finally, you go to the hotel and you walk down the hall and the motion sensors turn on the light. So, the next thing i want to do is talk about as you continuing going through the fullbody scanner so let me read the narrative part from the book, the person ahead of you in line for the metal detector has thrown a wrench. The tsa precheck detector should not have been set up by the rich was a trend wristwatch. Levels need to be adjusted to avoid false positives. The tsa agent instruction to the fullbody scanner. And senior pockets of everything including paper money you secure from the atm you place it in a plastic dish on the xray machine conveyor belt. Step into the scanner with your elbows but you raise your arms above your head and then you suck in your belly. You stand still wallet orbits roger. I surrender you say, just dont let me miss my flight so, how does this work . How does the see under your clothing . Youre standing here and they orbit around you and quickly they have an image that can tell if you have anything secured under your clothing. There are two ways to emit something you can have the light passed through the object and look for the differences in how much light is transmitted, call transmission mode where you can look at how much light is reflected. In transmission mode like avonex or a and xrays are highenergy light and an xray will be deflected by the electrons in an atom. Border molecules are mostly water. They have ten electrons. The calcium in our bones has 20 electrons. Calcium atoms are more effective than scattering xrays than the soft tissue which is mostly water. So when you have xrays pass through the body it goes easily through the soft tissue in larger items like the calcium in your spine her rib cage will deflect xrays away. The detector sheet will be dark and when theres few xrays because i got scattered it will be lighter. So we get an image this way. Or, we can look at reflections in the light and look for variations in the reflection. The fullbody scanner does not use xrays it uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that has a wavelength of 1 millimeter. Or more generally, microwaves. If i have an electric charge on arad and i waive it back and forth, and generate a very in electric field which generates a Magnetic Field and as they propagate out we call that light. If i shake it back and forth at one time per second thats the frequency of the light. It would have the wavelength of about 300 millimeters. If i shake it couple hundred millions times per second i would generate radio wave. Shake it back and forth a billion times i generate microwave. Faster still, you would actually start to see this is visible light. Faster still you get ultraviolet then xrays and gamma ray. Theyre all the same phenomena. Still alternating electromagnetic waves. The only difference is the wavelength and frequency. These microwaves that have a wavelength of about a millimeter. Because the wavelength of those electromagnetic waves is large compared to the fibers that make up your clothing. Just as in large ocean wave is not scattered by one swimmer in the water but would be scattered by a large ocean liner or the show, the Millimeter Waves pass through your clothing but are reflected by your skin. Theres anything underneath your clothing that has a different reflection that scatters late differently than your skin that will show up as a changing contrast. None of these touch screens would work without ito. Let me actually read the narrative part from the book. The person that is in line for the metal detecter through a wrench in the work. I surrender you say. There are two ways to image something. You can have the light pass through the object and look for the differences in how much light is transmitted or you can look at how much light is reflected. Lighter. So we get an image this way. Or, we can look at reflections in the light and look for variations in the reflection. The fullbody scanner does not use xrays it uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that has a wavelength of 1 millimeter. Or more generally, microwaves. If i have an electric charge on arad and i waive it back and forth, and generate a very in electric field which generates a Magnetic Field and as they propagate out we call that light. If i shake it back and forth at one time per second thats the frequency of the light. It would have the wavelength of about 300 millimeters. If i shake it couple hundred millions times per second i would generate radio wave. Shake it back and forth a billion times i generate microwave. Faster still, you would actually start to see this is visible light. Faster still you get ultraviolet then xrays and gamma ray. Theyre all the same phenomena. Still alternating electromagnetic waves. The only difference is the wavelength and frequency. These microwaves that have a wavelength of about a millimeter. Because the wavelength of those electromagnetic waves is large compared to the fibers that make up your clothing. Just as in large ocean wave is not scattered by one swimmer in the water but would be scattered by a large ocean liner or the show, the Millimeter Waves pass through your clothing but are reflected by your skin. Theres anything underneath your clothing that has a different reflection that scatters late differently than your skin that will show up as a changing contrast. That would be a way of seeing underneath the close the scene what you have. In this way it would indicate theres something more that another test needs to be done. Thats why have to completely into your pocket of any paper or anything else because that would scatter the Millimeter Waves differently. By the way, no matter how long a student phone booth youre not going to get baked like a baked potato. The power is thousands of times weaker than a microwave oven or cell phone. Is it the same part of the spectrum that yourself one uses. The slower power and you would get the same amount of radiation in the first two minutes of your airplane flight. We evolve in a sea of electromagnetic radiation. So, that part is not too hazardous. The next and to go on your luck seems to have run out. Your bag has caught the attention of the tsa agent operating a scanner. As you return the contents of your pocket back to where they belong you hear the full word you never want to hear at an Airport Security checkpoint. Is this your bag . You not in the agent tells you he wants to test it further. He takes you back to a stainless steel table behind the checkpoint invites wipes outside of the bag. He places the disc into a large device which you know is labeled the next also traced detector. Less than a minute later it gives the all clear in the tsa agent thinks you for your cooperation. Youre free to go and not a moment too soon. Youll have to hurry to get your gate on time. Spoiler alert, you make it so, how does the device work . Weve all had at some point where they wipe around your luggage with this piece of paper and put it inside a box i was suspect that they just burn the paper and wait a minute and say your fine. They do burn the paper, but theres other interesting physics. If you handle many explosives, powders there will be