Professor Ghaemi, right, with our students and STEM teachers, Tiffani Kolozian and Veeshan Narinesingh.
By Veeshan Narinesingh, STEM program leader
Last Monday we had a very special visitor from the City College Physics Department, Professor Pouyan Ghaemi.
Professor Pouyan Ghaemi worked on the water-bottle pendulums for the particle demonstration.
Ghaemi, who received his Ph.D. from MIT, is a condensed matter physicist, which means he specializes in solid materials such as metals, magnets, semiconductors and insulators. This area of knowledge allows us to create pretty much every electronic device known to humanity.
Professor Ghaemi spoke to our young men about a very special topic, quantum mechanics, an essential realm of knowledge to any physicist. In the weird world of particles, which are generally on the scale of atoms or smaller, reality as we know it goes from something very defined to a probabilistic smear of indeterminacy.
Dr. Ghaemi explained it best in an example. “If we hit two golf balls, side by side, they move completely independently. Any shift in the motion of one generally does not affect the motion of the other. In quantum mechanics, however, two quantum-sized golf balls can ultimately affect one another. Because the particles begin to behave more like waves, a change in the ‘trajectory’ of one can certainly affect the ‘motion’ of the other.”
In a simplified model, Professor Ghaemi performed a demonstration with our young men. Students put together three pendulums hanging from the same support; these acted as our particles, or waves, oscillating back and forth. The pendulums were set in motion asynchronously. As the system evolved in time, very interesting things started to happen. See the video below to learn more.