Ideas for physics talk?

Justice!

Hey everyone!

As part of a college assignment I'm supposed to give a power point presentation on any topic which is physics-relevant.

Has anyone got any ideas for areas in physics which might be interesting to give a talk about?

Thanks a million for any advice!

Carawaystick

Justice! wrote: »

Hey everyone!

As part of a college assignment I'm supposed to give a power point presentation on any topic which is physics-relevant.

Has anyone got any ideas for areas in physics which might be interesting to give a talk about?

Thanks a million for any advice!

What are you doing in College?

Wave/Particle Duality is always good, as it's daft.
The double slit experiment.


Or ET Walton's splitting the atom

Or Callan with the Induction Coil

Filibuster

The solar eclipse experiments conducted to prove Einstein's General Relativity.

greedygoblin

Maybe something that's particle physics related. This might be relevant given the awarding of the Nobel prize to Peter Higgs recently for his work on the Higgs boson. You could bring up stuff about the standard model, the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the hunt for dark matter, dark energy etc.

I would recommend though that you pick an area of physics that you have an interest in. If you have a passion for a subject then this will come across in your presentation.

endacl

The settling pint of Guinness. Where does the brown go?

greedygoblin

Or how they get the figs into the figrolls. I'm sure there is a perfectly plausible scientific explanation for that.

Morbert

Doing a talk on recent Nobel prizes is always a safe bet.

You could do a talk on the wonder-material, graphene, for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

Justice!

Wow thanks for all the responses!

What are you doing in College?

I'm studying physics at the moment, only a teensy first year.

Hmm I like the graphene suggestion, I have a big interest in materials so I think I might go along that road! Although the pint of guiness sounds like a decent excuse to pop down the pub for a few hours

Gracebrennan11

endacl wrote: »

The settling pint of Guinness. Where does the brown go?

A lecturer in UL did research on this:
http://www.staff.ul.ie/eugenebenilov/hpage/pubs/ajp13.pdf

If youre still looking for a topic, the new gravitational waves discovery would be cool, check out Derek Muller's video on the veritasium chanel on youtube, it's nearly flawless!

citrus burst

Lasers, always lasers, physicists love lasers.

If you're in 1st year a good idea might be the physics behind movies. How generally crap and wrong they are. Make sure to mention the lasers.

Since you like materials Moore's law might be a good idea. Tons of stuff in that, really relevant and fairly interesting, not much lasers though. Quantum wells and nanodots might be a better call if you want to include lasers.