Physics 218 Links: Spring 2015

Dispersion in Fiber Optics

• A review article all about solitons, with considerable discussion of applications.
• http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20011023S0055.
• A general introduction to using soliton pulses in fiber optics.
• A page about "Light Bullets" by Darran Edmundson and Richard Enns Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada
• A page about solitons by Chris Eilbeck, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, including a recreation of the original soliton observed by Scott Russel.

General Interest

Uncertainties in Particle Physics

Other Fun Links

Getting Started with Mathematica

To obtain a student copy of Mathematica, visit the following ITS web site: https://help.lafayette.edu/mathematica/students.

There are a variety of on-line tutorials available for Mathematica. I recommend going to Wolfram.com and exploring their on-line resources. Some students have reported the following to be useful:

• "Hands-on Start". A series of screencasts that walk you through many different aspects of Mathematica, with a good balance between overview information and specific, detailed information that allows you to actually accomplish something quickly.
• These screencasts are part of the Getting Started channel, which is one of many channels available in the Wolfram Screencast & Video Gallery.
• Many more resources are available in the Learning Center.

Constants, Units, and Uncertainty

The National Institute of Technology and Standards maintains a useful page with the current best values for many fundamental constants, at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/.

The July 2014 issue of Physics Today included an interesting article about a proposed revamping of the standards used for many fundamental constants. You can read about it in the article A more fundamental International System of Units.

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