APS News

June 2003 (Volume 12, Number 6)

Members in the Media

"Higher bat speed generally means the ball comes off the bat faster."
—Alan M. Nathan, University of Illinois, on why baseballs travel farther when hit with aluminum bats, Baltimore Sun, April 21, 2003


"Runners tend to lean somewhat forward, and to go from a somewhat forward lean in the run to a headfirst dive has a certain efficiency."
—Robert K. Adair, Yale University, on why a headfirst slide might be more efficient, Newsday, April 22, 2003


"Pulsed power electrical systems have always been energy rich but power poor. That is, we can deliver a lot of energy, but it wasn't clear we could concentrate it on a small-enough area to create fusion. Now it seems clear we can do that."
—Ramon J. Leeper, Sandia National Laboratories, on recent results from Sandia's Z-machine, Albuquerque Tribune, April 7, 2003


"We are eager to see what [LIGO's] future detections will reveal, as the instrument attains its full design sensitivity over the next couple of years."
—Lee Samuel Finn, Pennsylvania State University, SPACE.com, April 7, 2003


"What we're trying to do is find where charge symmetry comes from."
—Edward Stephenson, Indiana University, on the observation of a pi-zero produced in deuterium fusion, Indiana Daily Student, April 4, 2003


"I did not like blood and gore."
—Vina A. Punjabi, Norfolk State University, on why she chose physics over biology, The Virginian-Pilot, April 6, 2003


"It turns out the effect depends only on the velocity of the moving object—in this case Jupiter."
—Clifford Will, Washington University, on whether the speed of gravity has been measured, UPI Science News, April 7, 2003


"The motion of dark matter can also be described statistically by a similar equation used for the Brownian motion. This equation is very different from Newton's law [of gravity] used in the computer model. This doesn't mean Newton's law is not applicable—it means the new equation that we found provides a new language for describing how dark matter clumps."
—Chung-Pei Ma, University of California, Berkeley, on how dark matter clumps in galaxy formation, SPACE.com, April 15, 2003


"We use a 14-inch and a 24-inch telescope. We plan to beta test another 14-inch telescope in Chile, which may come online in fall 2003. This will open to us the Southern Hemisphere sky."
—Ron Armale, Cypress College, on how students use campus computers to operate telescopes remotely, Orange County Register, March 31, 2003

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Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette