A place to relax, enjoy some coffee and cookies, and explore ideas about our physical universe... for science and non-science types!

On Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 7:30 pm in the Emerson Suites J.C. Séamus Davis, a captivating speaker from Cornell who has done amazing work on high-temperature superconductivity and imaging techniques that show the wave properties of superconducting materials will give this year's Physics Café. This Physics Café celebrates the 50th anniversary of the creation of School of Humanities and Sciences in 1956. In 1956 John Bardeen was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on semiconductors. In 1972 Bardeen became the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in physics. His 1972 award was for his role in the theory of superconductivity. Professor Davis will discuss his work on superconductivity and describe the development of "wavefunction imaging" scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) techniques that allow us to visualize complex electronic matter directly at the atomic scale.

The Physics Café is a campus-wide lecture series sponsored by the Physics Department of Ithaca College. The idea is to grab and hold the attention of science and non-science majors by offering talks on exciting and accessible current topics in physics, such as the time-warping properties of black holes, or the exploration of planet mars.   The talks are presented in a café environment, where coffee is served and students and physicists can informally discuss new ideas.

There are no pre-requisites! No requirements! Everyone is welcome!   Starbucks coffee (caffeinated and decaf.) will be served, along with cookies and biscuits. An informal talk-back session with the speaker will immediately follow each presentation. The Physics Café takes place at the beginning of each semester, before the workload gets heavy, and while students and faculty are not preoccupied with prelims. The lecture is free and open to the public.

For more information on our speaker, please see Dr. Davis at Cornell University For more information about Dr. Davis's research please see the website: http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~jcdavis/

Contact: Professor Beth Ellen Clark Joseph
Center for Natural Sciences, Room 267
607 274 3968