These are projects I'm currently working on. The advantage of getting involved with one of these is that you join an ongoing, well-defined research effort, and it's easier for me to come up concrete tasks we can develop into a student presentation.
For the past couple of years, I have been working on extending a "two-dimensional" model of the atmosphere originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. This helps us study questions like the effect of clouds and aerosols -- which may change due to human activity -- on the solar radiation reaching the surface.
Students working on this project will get acquainted with a typical long-term research collaboration. They will learn some basic programming skills, particularly involving graphical display of complex scientific data. For example, the following is an animated display of the variation in ozone levels with altitude and latitude throughout a year.
I also expect my research students to learn some of the basic physics of energy transfer in the atmosphere, much of which is, like the greenhouse effect, quite accessible to beginning students.
As I collaborate with Lawrence Livermore, my students will have an inside track when applying for a LLNL summer student position -- a very rewarding experience.
I have long been interested in exploring the territory where physics meets theoretical computer science. One problem which I am currently looking at is understanding how randomness appears in all our fundamental theories of physics.
We often contrast classical mechanics, with its deterministic dynamical laws, with the randomness inherent in the trajectory of quantum systems. But randomness appears in every fundamental theory: in the initial conditions of classical mechanics and statistical physics, and in spacetime boundaries like black holes in general relativity. There is something interesting here; and I think I can develop an argument about how the various forms of randomness we see are related.
I will introduce students interested in this project to dynamical systems theory at a level more abstract than usually encountered in physics, and help them to see concepts like entropy, irreversibility, or chaos from a more directly computational perspective. I expect the students in turn to help me express such ideas in ways accessible to undergraduates, or at a semipopular level. Asking good questions is the main job.
As this project develops, I hope to take opportunities to explore some related questions in the history and philosophy of physics, so students who have broad interests and who are not afraid of using the library will have some scope here as well.
| Taner Edis | Home |
| Last modified: 25-Apr-2003 |