taste of science: Synthetic Biology and Quantum Mechanics

Synthetic Biology (and pants)

We are surrounded by microorganisms. Your intestines contain 100 trillion of them; three microorganisms for every human cell in your body. The oceans contain as many as a million bacteria in every milliliter. Each has evolved a variety of techniques to survive and thrive. Synthetic biologists aim to harness this diversity to solve real, human problems - like the need for pants.

Speaker: Terry Johnson, UC Berkeley

(Can) Things be at two places at one time (?)

Big objects like you and me (no offense) are always in one place at any one time. The physics of small particles, quantum mechanics, breaks common experience and suggests that particles can be in two places at once. Is that really what the theory implies? In this talk, I’ll tackle that question and argue that the “being” in two places at once makes more sense than only ever being at one place at a time. I’ll discuss how this quantum property plays out in atomic clocks and atom interferometers.

Speaker: Eric Copenhaver, UC Berkeley