Posted in December 2009
Twelfth lecture quantum transport
was the last regular lecture of the course. There will be a no-lecture #13 where I summarize the whole course and students ask questions: I have promised a prize of choice to a person who asks the biggest number of those.
There were several moments I stumbled during the lecture. One is when swithching from white noise to colorful environment: I guess I have to summarize what I want to do beforehand, the flow of the lecture makes a strange turn scattering attention of the audience. Second and third came close to each other: manifestations for decoherence/dephasing for electrons and dissipation mechanisms. Also, I was stressed in time when reached these transparensies. So that the disucssion of experiments was done in some hast.
Except this, the lecture was not bad. The attention/feedback was satisfactory. I even got an explanation why tau-phi is always bigger than tau-d. Actually, I’ve figured out it for myself only in the age of forty.
The Entry of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple
is one of the Great Feasts in Orthodox churches. Catholics call it Presentation and have celebrated it — right you are, two weeks ago. For me, it’s more like "entry", or more specifically, "braving stairs". Imagine a little child put in front of stairs with sufficiently challenging steps.(See this) You know what will happen: the child will climb up defying
gravity, possible inconveniences and minimal action principle. Not
thinking much about being at height. Just believing it is worth
climbing. So I hope I still climbe, and hope I do it in a right
direction.
In our parish, the feast is combined
today with another event circumstances of which are not completely
clear to me. Mayor of Amsterdam Job Cohen will visit our parish:
reportedly, to give a speech. I wonder if he climbs some stairs before
that: in fact, we do have some challenging ones. I look forward to more
details.
Tenth lecture advanced quantum mechanics
was on disspative quantum mechanics. To summarize, I am reasonably satisfied both with my own presentation and the way the lecture has been received. I felt tired already from the begining but could stay it till the end. There was a time problem close to the end of the lecture so that we had to skip almost everything about density matrix and purity test. The attention was tight, and I got many question s about skipped hbars and missed i’s.
There was a joyful noise from outside close to the end of the lecture. I had to get out and ask them to be quiter. Surprisingly, the guys making noise looked a way yonger than even first year students: wonder what did they do in the building. Perhaps they have been looking for their older brother/sister: a sound brust heard in 15 minutes might indicate they have finally found him/her.
# 11, the thoughest of the course, is nearing…