Dear colleagues, Next Monday's Physics Colloquium looks like it is going to be fantastic. Vinny does really amazing work on colloidal self-assembly and in the process has discovered some really deep things about entropy. Best, -Martin ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Maynard, Dayle <maynard(a)fas.harvard.edu> Date: Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 9:40 AM Subject: REMINDER Announcement: for Harvard Physics Colloquium Speaker Vinny Manoharan, Harvard University on 03/30/15 To: "faculty(a)physics.harvard.edu" <faculty(a)physics.harvard.edu>du>, " research(a)physics.harvard.edu" <research(a)physics.harvard.edu>du>, " grads(a)physics.harvard.edu" <grads(a)physics.harvard.edu>du>, " sps-list(a)hcs.harvard.edu" <sps-list(a)hcs.harvard.edu> Harvard Physics Colloquium Monday, March 30, 2015 4:15 p.m.-5:15 p.m. in Jefferson 250 Tea served in Jefferson 450 @ 3:30 p.m. *“What We’ve Learned About Entropy From Experiments On Colloidal Particles.”* Vinny Manoharan Harvard University For announcement poster please go to: http://www.physics.harvard.edu/events/colloquium.pdf *Abstract:* Entropy is one of the most interesting and confusing topics in physics. Gibbs himself said that the concept "may repel beginners." And John von Neumann is said to have told Claude Shannon to call his information measure "entropy, because nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage." Of course, scientific debates are best settled by experiments. I will discuss what we have learned about entropy from experiments on colloids, systems of classical, interacting nanoparticles that can be seen under an optical microscope. We find that entropy has a complex relationship with order and symmetry, but one that can be understood within a simple framework that does not "repel beginners" -- so long as we allow that entropy is a measure of the number of states that we as observers /choose/ not to distinguish, rather than of those that are fundamentally indistinguishable. I will show how that understanding allows us to use entropy to design new materials and nanomachines.