Month: September 2015

The trip to the U.S.

Firstly, I realized how easy to do international travel now. I can use my credit card issued by Australian bank as long as I can tell them where I am. I have real a US$20 but I haven’t used it for 3 days. Since the USD is very strong now I don’t want to see the bill now. But I will get per-diem by USD, it should be O.K. Since I found it is easy to travel to the U.S., if you want to travel for vacation, please let me know, I would love to join.

The goal of this trip is collecting data for local structure analysis. I can’t say the project but I am measuring one of Type-1 multiferroic and also frustrated magnetic materials by using so called Pair Density Function analysis techniques (PDF). The PDF analysis is kind of new techniques to structure of material. Originally, it was developed for disordered materials such as, gasses, amorphous, liquid, glasses, and so on to see the short range order of materials. I am applying it for crystallized materials which are long range. Actually by definition, the crystal orders infinite range. If you are familiar about scattering techniques on material science, you should know Rietveld analysis method. Basically, Rietveld analysis cares Bragg scattering which is, by definition, the intensity is coming from infinitive layers in crystal. However, PDF doesn’t care about Bragg scattering, we are basically analyzing the background. We can get information about structure by doing Fourier transform of background. To do that, we need high momentum transfer, basically we can only do it with spallation neutron source, such as SNS (U.S.A), J-PARC (JAPAN), ISIS (U.K). One of my advantage is I can use both analysis method, so I can get complete data set to know the structures of material very well.

I am planning to do experiment with the same material with different instrument in Australia, November 2015. I am doing elastic (not exactly elastic though) neutron scattering now, to know the structure of the material. And, I will do inelastic neutron scattering in Australia to know how the structure behave. We prepared 3 compositions of the sample should be same structure according to structural analysis for long range ordered. I believe short range order of this system is different what people currently know.

My original schedule was 9/18 Friday morning – 9/21 Monday morning. When I got there on Wednesday night, one of my friends told me that there was a problem on the instrument. On Thursday morning, I went to instrument I heard they had a problem on shutter wasn’t working. They fixed the problem until Friday night. We started experiment Friday night and stayed overnight. I was very impressed because the problem was not easy to be fixed. The shutter is between Hg target and detectors under the large Fe shield. They opened the Fe shield and fixed the problem just in two days. So I can start my experiment just 12 hours delay. They spent 6-7 engineer and 3-4 scientists to fix the problem. So, I believe I spent a lot of resources from American, only I can do is do my best science. Let’s publish the paper!!

I need to finish one more paper on my project which I used PDF technique and I will add more from this experiment. Currently, the instrument is working well. I will am leaving the U.S. tomorrow afternoon.

On reading (Septemper 9, 2015)

As I wrote in last post, Maestro is a good book I will keep reading. This book definitely changed my life.

“Fermat’s Last theorem” by Simon Singh: Sometime people say Math is the queen of science and Physics is the king of science. I will be able to something about this topic bot not today. The reason why I started reading book is I wanted to review about Math because I believe Math is my origin of curiosity. I loved Math so much when I was young. Even I was in college, I was reading about Math. I remember when I was student I just found this book I thought “somebody solve Fermat theorem” then I started reading. This book teaches us how mathematical concepts, such as “i”, were invented and the time line of development math while solving Fermat’s last theorem. I personally remember that Taniyama-Shimra conjecture and their story because Taniyama committed suicide. And that story keeps me thinking “why?”

“How to manage slaves” by Jerry Toner: I happened to find this book on the web. The title is shocking though, this book is talking about slaves in Roman Empire. The author from Cambridge University describes the culture of Roman Empire based on research. The book consists of two parts, Marcus Sidonius Falx talks how to buy, get the best from, punish, torture, set them free, and so on, slaves. And then the author explains later based on research. I like the part when Falx discussed his German friend. The German friend told him they don’t have slaves. He says “Imagine that? A society without slaves! Who has ever heard of such a things?” And we need to remember if we defined slave “who are forced to work against their will”, the world now has more than 27 million slaves which is much larger than Roman Empire had.

“Thought of Marcus Aurelius Antonius”: Sometime I feel I really am lucky enough to live this age. We can read this classic book for free on kindle. While, I feel humanity has not advanced much from the age Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (A.D 121 -180). I first read this book when I was student, I was very impressed and I am reading when I need. I like how the book starts, he started this book from what he had learned people around him. If I write some my thought in the future, I am sure I will write something like that. He was one of stoics also emperor. His thoughts are very practical, you should try. You would find some quote best for you.

I just started reading “The revenge of geography” by Robert D Kaplan. The author apparently writes this book against famous book “The world is flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. The author’s claim is that Geography still sometime is crucial to know how power in the world shift. I agree. I might review this book later. And, I just started listening to “On writing” Steven King. I like this book because he teaches me how much I should be serious for writing. I needed to write but I like writing now because of this book. I am reading this book because I need to write a lot in few months. I am afraid of but also looking forward to it. I think I have few more books I want to review but I’ll stop here because of limitation of words, like Fermat!! Maybe tomorrow

I am at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A now, I am writing experiences here now.

The Book review No.22: Maestro, surprising story about leading by listening

This is one of book I should have read earlier. I found this book my wish list on my kindle. I personally admire myself not having thrown away this from my wish list. I decided to buy this book because I was interested in “listening” in general these days. I was thinking I wasn’t listening to the other people’s thinking and talking. The book is consist of two part, one is interview of a conductor and the other is the author adapt what he learned to his business. Unfortunately, the business part is redundant and less information.

I was interested listening because I believe the person who listens always is smarter than who speaks. If he has, let’s say, knowledge = 1, if he talks all the time to people, his knowledge would be still 1. But, if he listens, then he would get more than 1 + alpha. Even he did not learn anything from listening, but we can still keep 1 with deeper understanding. I know listening is better than speaking. But, the problem is “am (was) I listening to people talking, really?” Listening is always chance to learn more but I was feeling I needed to listen to their talk more.

As a musician, I am not a good listener. I actually am dumb. That’s why I am not good at music. But, I would like to listen to music better. I believe having good ears is most critical part of talent to be a good musician. So I really wanted to know this.

A great conductor leads orchestra by listening. He does not order to play. How that works? By the way, orchestra consists of best musicians. They can play perfect without the conductor. So, the question is why they need conductor. You can find out from this book yourself. But what I found on this book are three things mainly.

One is the great performance happens when both musician’s and conductor’s motivation spring at same level. The conductor’s job is to create the environment where that happens. The second one is some musicians are busy, others are not. Yet all of this is coordinated with pinpoint precision. That is not easy to achieve. The musicians have to expand their awareness in both time and space. The third one is the role of conductor is to lead each musicians to play what they have never played. So he needs to understand composition very well. And then, they are challenging and motivating musicians to the music has never been played before by listening.

The scene I particularly like is the way he teaches conducting. The conductor let student conduct orchestra and then he does after. When he finishes the same passage and turned to student and says to him,

Conductor “So what was the difference? Could you hear it?”
Student “I heard it for sure but I can’t say how you did it”
Conductors “Well, let’s try to understand this.”

The conductor is very thoughtful. He is a great thinker. He really tries to explain how he is thinking about the music he achieves. The conductor study music very well. He knows of course the music very well, but so do musicians. That’s 21th century music.

It’s time to find ticket to listen orchestra. I can listen to music better and more enjoyable now.

What I am thinking now

I started writing again because I am feeling I can’t still express my ideas in English very well in daily life. This is very frustrating.

I would say I can finally settle down Australia, Sydney. I have been experiencing a lot of things. This country of course is different either from Japan or the U.S.A. And, I am also working for Taiwan. To be honest, it is not easy to express my thoughts to anyone even I am using my native language. It is too complex because I need to be careful for four countries and its people. If I had lived only in Japan, I would have never thought about this. And, if I had lived only in Japan and U.S.A, I would have never thought about either. I am an experiment physicist working for Taiwan, in Australia, with sometime American, and as Japanese. (By the way, I am coming to the U.S. for experiment from Sep.16-21)

I haven’t written my thoughts down just because I couldn’t be honest. I could not write my thoughts with correct words, right logic, and appropriate politeness. I am a physicist, I would like to express my idea simply but not by thinking simply. The truths with simplicity have to be extracted carefully by my thinking based on my honest observation and comfortable amount of my research. However, my honest thoughts sometime hurt someone, might make someone angry. And also, I would like to be fair for everyone. So, I just couldn’t have written my thought here.

As I said to my friends, my purpose of life is to build the best character as possible throughout what I do in my life. Family is one of most important things but I am a single now so I don’t need to take so much time for them, I mean, my future family. But, the other thing is work. Working as a physicist gives me chances to contribute to the society and world. By being a physicist, what I am doing is expanding accessible future possibilities of human beings to strengthen probabilities of survival of this species. And, that is my definition of “intelligence”. That’s why I am challenging myself every single day.

As a scientist, I never forget this quote.

“Science is made by men, a self-evident fact that is far too often forgotten”
Werner Heisenberg

I need to start this. We do science not because we need, are needed, want, nor are wanted. Challenging new knowledge is not easy but sometimes we have fun. But we do this because we believe the nature could be understood by us rationally. Physicists do theory and experiment because we believe we can understand the nature. And, we believe understanding the nature contributes to human civilization. Knowledge, talents, and skills are not so important to be a scientist but the scientist has to have right motivation with their own philosophy. We do make mistake sometimes but we don’t deceit because that is totally against our fundamental belief which is “We can understand the nature by using capabilities we are given.”

It doesn’t matter how technology advanced, if the motivation is not right, there is no meaning of advancing science. That’s why this is important. The science is made by men. The system of science is perfect (This is also true for the system human made such as democracy, capitalism, and even communism, so on) but human sometimes makes the system bad because we are not perfect mentally and physically. If you want to know whether or not he/she is good scientist, you can know by knowing what he/she speak, how he/she behaves, and why he/she does so.

I will go on my scientific philosophy from I learned from experimental physics. I personally am focusing on problem solving skill because that we can do but A.I. can’t do in near future. I will also write book review. My reading pace now is like 15-20 books a month. It might be good idea to start short review what I read. Thank you for reading this.