🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug4.182709.20879@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
> In article <1992Aug3.172547.1@fnalo.fnal.gov> higgins@fnalo.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>>In article <25173@dog.ee.lbl.gov>, sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
> 
>>> I tell them I'm a nuclear physicist.  The typical response is "Really! How
>>> interesting... What do you do/study?" at which point I ask whether they
>>> want the real (5 minute) answer or the 10 second answer.  99% of the time,
>>> people request the 10 second answer, at which point I say that I bang
>>> nuclei together at high energy, and isn't the salmon mousse tasty... 
>> 
>>> Only twice can I recall someone asking for the long version[...]
>>
>>I can't help thinking that you're going to the wrong parties.
>>
>>[I give people a two-word answer:  "Smash atoms."  If they still 
>>seem interested, I feed 'em a bit more detail.]
> 
> I agree with "smash atoms".  Academics have a habit of talking to each
> other in mini-lectures -- the way we do on sci.physics!  This is great
> for communicating complex material to someone who is already interested,
> but it ain't gonna make you the life of the party.  If you ask a truck
> driver what he does, I doubt he will even consider giving a 5-minute
> explanation of the trucking business (which is no doubt fairly complex).
> He will probably say "I drive rigs back and forth between here and Baton
> Rouge" (or whatever - I actually don't what they do!).  So say "smash
> atoms" and if they say how, feed them another tantalizing bit.
> 
> I'm actually not very good at this myself.  Someone asks me what I do
> research on and I say "knots and physics" and they get excited but at
> this point I get stuck because I want to say "well, Wilson loops in
> topological quantum field theories define knot invariants", but that
> is already too hard for most folks.

I am so excited I don't know how to start this ... All right. Now. I am very
interested in knots and physics! Knots entered my life when I received the
Februrary 1988 issue of the Mathematics Magazine (in which my names had for the
first time appeared for solving some problems; I'm not boasting but it shows
that particular issue of the Magazine had a special significance for me) which
contained an excellent article on the newly discovered knot invariants,
particularly the Jones polynomial. In the fall of 1990, when I took the Special
Topics class in math (Differential Geometry), I chose "Knot Theory and Statis-
tical Mechanics" as my independent study project. It was a short project. What
I did basically was studied (and explained to the class) the proof that the
Jones polynomial is invariant under the Reidemeister moves, and briefly
summarized the Scientific American article "Knot Theory and Statistical
Mechanics" by Jones. Since I got to take the Stat Mech class only a year later,
my study of that article at that time was limited in depth. But still, I was
very excited about the relationship between knot theory and physics. (Right
now, I have been saving some money to buy that book called "Knots and
Physics".) Any way, I want to ask you (John): "What do you do research on?"
I have had some quantum mechanics, but not QFT yet (which I hope to learn in
not too distant a future).