Lux & Flux: The History and Philosophy of Physics Podcast

Hello! It's been a while, but I'm back with some updates and with a new bonus episode for you all :)

I was happy to be invited back to the Intelligent Speech podcasting conference, held on  June 25, 2022. I took part in the STEM roundtable discussion and also presented a talk entitled "You Are My Sun-Line: Solar Spectroscopy and an Early Spectroscope". I discuss the history of solar spectroscopy, from rainbows to Newton to intergalactic stellar analysis, as well as two 19th century spectroscopes held by the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge.

How do we know what stars are made of? What have lines got to do with it? This talk will answer these questions and more, with the help of a 19th century spectroscope (or two!).

You can watch the video recording on the Intelligent Speech Conference YouTube channel.

This bonus episode is about the photoelectric effect and features a couple revolutionary and Nobel prize winning concepts - the quantization of energy and of light. From the ultraviolet catastrophe to the revolutionary beginnings of modern physics. Grab a "quantum" coffee and give this episode a listen! (Also, Happy New Year!!)

In this episode, I take a bit of a broader look at ancient Greece in the 7th - 4th centuries BCE (Archaic and Classical Greece) and discuss some of the reasons why natural philosophy arose here at this time.

This episode is about Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, the final Presocratic I'm planning on covering! He thought there was a little bit of everything in everything and that mind set the universe in motion. He also did some observational science and is credited as the first to correctly explain the cause of eclipses.

This episode is about Empedocles, who tried to solve the Parmenidean problem in a different way than his near contemporaries - the atomists. Empedocles launched the ancient Greek theory of the four classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water).

Welcome to Season 2! This episode is on the original atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, and their original atomic theory from way back in the 5th century BCE. I discuss the nature of the void and ancient atoms, how they relate to the matter we can also sense, and how this theory relates to some of the work discussed earlier in the podcast (especially the work of Parmenides).

Hello again! It's been a while (sorry!), but I am finally back to producing podcast episodes and will start releasing them in a couple of weeks. This short announcement will have a bit more information about the (seasonal) release schedule for Season 2 and my exciting news about school next year :D

This is an audio-friendly version of the talk I gave at the UBC Gender Equity & STEM Virtual Conference on November 14, 2020.

Abstract:

Since I don't yet have the next proper podcast episode recorded and ready, I wanted to share with you all one of the other things I've been working on the last little while. I'm the founder and president of a volunteer group called the UBC Young Women for STEM which seeks to reduce the gender gap in STEM. One of my group's events is an annual conference and this year's conference was postponed from March and transitioned online to make it safer.

This bonus episode is a recording of the talk I gave at the Intelligent Speech Summer 2020 online podcasting conference! 

I speak about four women from scientific history: Hypatia of Alexandria, St. Hildegard of Bingen, Ada Lovelace, and Tu Youyou. They lived in time periods as far apart as Ancient Greece and the Modern Day and their work paved the way for women studying science today while changing science, and our world, for the better.

You can check out the video recording of the presentation on the Intelligent Speech Conference's YouTube channel (you can search it or just follow the link on the podcast's website and social media pages).