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Show The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, July 30-August 2, 2005 Physics magic lights up U The public is invited to Demo Show, Nobel winner's lecture at Kingsbury Hall As almost 1,300 physics teachers meet at the University of Utah, the public is invited to attend two events: a Demonstration Show meant to display the magic of physics and a Nobel Prize winners lecture on microscopic to atomsized "nanoscience." The free public events are sponsored by the University of Utah's Department of Physics and the American Association of Physics Teachers, which is holding its Aug. 6-10 summer meeting on campus. The Demonstration Show and lecture are part of the physics community's ongoing recognition of 2005 as the World Year of Physics, which is being celebrated 100 years after Albert Einstein's most significant discoveries. •The Demonstration Show will be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday Aug. 8 in Kingsbury Hall on Presidents Circle. •Horst Stormer, who shared the 199S Nobel Prize in Physics, will deliver a lecture on "Small Wonders: The World of Nanoscience" at 4 p.m. Tuesday Aug. 9 in Kingsbury Hall. During the Demonstration Show, Zigmund "Ziggy" Peacock, University of Utah's physics demonstrator, will be joined by colleagues from Rutgers, Brigham Young, Idaho State, Brown, Oregon State and other universities in providing loud and colorful demonstrations of physics principles. Details are still being worked out, but "we will certainly shatter some glass with sound, and smash a concrete block on a person sandwiched between two 'beds of nails,"' Peacock says. "We will try to show some of the magic that is physics." Peacock also plans to use an air gun to shoot a 10-inch wooden bullet at a stuffed toy cougar - the mascot of rival Brigham Young University. Meanwhile, Wayne Peterson. BYU's physics demonstration coordinator, says he may drop a University of Utah football helmet and fire a similar bullet at it to demonstrate how gravity works on both the helmet and the buliet. Stormer, who works at Columbia University in New York and Lucent Technologies' Bell . Labs in New Jersey, will speak on nanoscience and nanotechnology. Nano means one-billionth. Nanoscience and nanotechnology encompass everything from a few atoms in size up to just about what can be seen through a microscope. "Atoms represent the most gigantic LEGO set of the universe - everything is made from them and the nanoscale is the scale where the game becomes interesting for the first time," says a summary of Stormer's lecture on the physics teachers' website. "This lecture will focus on the nanoscale. its wondrous meeting of physics, chemistry, biology and engineering, and its potential to shape our technological future." Stormer shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics with Daniel Tsui and Robert Laughlin for the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect, or what has been described as how electrons exposed to ultracold temperatures and strong magnetic fields can behave more like a fluid than like particles. Most other events during the summer meeting arc open only to registered participants, which include high school, college and university physics teachers from around the world. However, on Monday Aug. 8 and Tuesday Aug. 9, local educators and the public may visit the physics education exhibit hall that will be set up in the university's Olpin Union Building Ballroom. Such visitors first must pick up a pass at the meeting registration desk in Olpin Union's Parlor A. News media representatives seeking more information on the American Association of Physics Teachers summer meeting may see the group's Web site at http://www.aapt.org/Events/SM05/ index.cfm or contact Carol Heimpel, AAPT director of meetings, starting Aug. 6 at her temporary office in Parlor C of the Olpin Union Building, phone (801) 5879773. Before the meeting, Heimpel may be reached at (301)209-3340. Columns on West still timely By LAURA PASKUS High Country News Bernard DeVoto. a man with few sacred cows, wrote a monthly column on the West for Harpers magazine from 1946 until 1955. From "The Easy Chair," he expounded on everything from how . cattlemen destroyed Western watersheds to why the West is "systematically looted and has always been bankrupt." Now, history professor Edward K. Muller has collected $2 of DeVoto's magazine pieces in DeVoto's West - and they arc just as timely today as they were last century. Born in the West and educated in the East. DeVoto didnt go easy on any of his countrymen. With equal parts glee and vitriol, he wrote that Westerners who perceived themselves as rugged individuals were, in fact, being ripped off by Eastern businessmen eager to take advantage of the region's natural resources and gullible inhabitants. Today, energy companies still treat the region as a colony to exploit, and businessmen and politicians still try to privatize public lands and resources in the name of "patriotism." The regions inhabitants still struggle in an arid climate - and it's a shame that no one heeded DeVoto's advice in 1954 that, when it comes to water, "from here on out we cannot afford to decide anything wrong." It's hard to decide which is more unbelievable: that Harper's magazine once had a monthly column dedicated to Western issues, or that the American Livestock and the National Wool Growers Associations read it as closely as they did in 1947, when they gave DeVoto and the magazine "a thorough working-over" after his column about their "assault" on the West's public lands. The Eastern press pays even less attention to the West than it did 50 years ago. But maybe the region doesn't need the Eastern media's attention. As DeVoto wrote in 1927: "We are healthier and saner and less trusting than our neighbors on either side, and we live in the sun." High Country News (www.hcn.org) covers the West's communities and natural resource issuesfromPaonia, Colorado. CREDIT CARD PURCHASES ONLY off with tV\e ' I T A L I A N St Cafe 151 street Saturday, July 30 Tuesday], August M\ A DISTINCTIVE SOUTHWEST RE6TAURANT 368 mAiN S + RE6 + 435-649-6222 VALID SA+URDAY, |ULY 30 + H +HRSUGH TUESDAY. AUGUS+ 2ND CB?rnso NOW OPEN SUNDAYS^ 577 Main Street 435-615-0300 Vglfd Saturday, July 30th, SundayJuly 31st and Tuesday, August 2nd Closed Monday ciz.et>\T ONL>{ *NO CASH CREDIT CARD PURCHASES ONLY C-9 |