Joy of comprehension

Journal “Club”

philgiese — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:56:24 +0000

Well, not really. But on I have my personal dump, to say it like that. Right now in german form, later on in english, are “Reviews” or lets say musings about papers I read recently.

Description vs Explanation

philgiese — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:09:52 +0000

One common statement I hear about natural sciences is that they only describe nature and doesn’t explain the phenomena. I highly doubt that, even though our explanations might be wrong and certainly will be incomplete. But even a wrong explanation is more than a description – at least a totally different thing.
A description can’t predict the outcome of an event without being pure inductive.
Assume an artist paints almost everytime the sea, the coast of cornwall for instance. A description is “Almost all his paintings have a nautic character” and yes, the “descriptive person” might assume “I would bet that his next picture is again about the ocean”.
An explanation would be quite different; perhaps the artist lives in a small house near the Bedruthan steps, his whole life he loved the ocean etc. That could explain why he is so obsessed.
And here we are what science is about: To collect the clues, analyze them so that people are able to predict the future of the observed system. If I can predict its future, I understand (at least in defined boundaries) it and can even control it.
The clues I am collecting might be mere descriptions. But the sum of these descriptions, interpreted, is the seed for something more.

Introduction

philgiese — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:20:11 +0000

Hi everybody!

PhD-students (and diploma-students, Post-docs etc) in experimental physics live a joyous, a tragic and a dramatic life.

Joyous, because in my opinion there’s nothing that beautiful as to see in a recorded spectra that your theoretical presumptions were right or to see, that you can control something on a nanoscale. In general, most spectra I recorded and understood were beautiful. And if a measruement helps you to gain new insights, if your setup works – what a great feeling. Seriously, I almost danced two weeks ago when I saw that the year I spent building, repairing and optimizing my experimental setup seemed to be worth the long time waiting and working.
Oh, and buying all that fancy stuff like Lasers, UHV-chambers, AFMs etc. pp. is also just great.

Tragic, because there will be times where you just sit in despair beside your broken setup. Yepp, it broke again. Since two months you try to fix the cryostate and IT JUST WON’T WORK. At least during your diploma thesis and your PhD, there will be moments where you ask yourself why you are torturing yourself like that. I know I did, and even a former colleague of mine who is more than just talented (Every Referee in his promotional discussion and every referee his PhD-thesis agreed to give him a summa cum laude) knew that kind of feelings.

Dramatic, because you definetly will take your work to your home. It’ll haunt you in your dreams. The first and last thoughts of the day will concern your project. Why? Well, on the one hand, because there’s something that needs to be done at any time, but on the other hand because you just love your work. You chose not one of your hobbies as a job, no, you live one of your passions.

For me, a hobby is something I do to relax, if it stresses me, I do something different. I love a lot of different music genres but I would NEVER be a Diskjockey (not for money) because its something I don’t want to have to do it.

A passion is different. For a passion, I accept that there will be stressful, frustrating times who will drive me nuts. Today I saw that the crucible of my evaporator was surprisingly empty; since the evaporator isn’t behind a load lock I have to do a bakeout – and my weekend is planned. Man, was I frustrated. I don’t want to live my passion because its fun (yet it might be sometimes) but because it’s my life.

This Blog is not planned to be a venting tool if I am mad, but I want to share my experiences and musings with the careful reader. Comments are highly appreciated, especially if I talk about something less personal as this post.