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Week of the 03/08/2020 - #31

Contents

Science

  • Stephen Wolfram: Building A New Kind of Science
  • A First Course in String Theory

Art

  • Making of British & Exotic Mineralogy

Stephen Wolfram: Building A New Kind of Science

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; the originator of the Wolfram Physics Project; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of more than four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business. He recently did a long interview in YouTube and talks about his advances in the last year with regards to ‘A New Kind of Science’. Here’s the video: [youtube]

  • Some Relativistic and Gravitational Properties of the Wolfram Model [pdf]
  • Some Quantum Mechanical Properties of the Wolfram Model [pdf]
  • A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics [web] [pdf]
  • Stephen Wolfram - How Do Brains Function? - A short interview with Stephen Wolfram talking about the brain. [youtube]

Making of British & Exotic Mineralogy

Part of the poster created from the illustrations intthe catalog

“British Mineralogy and Exotic Mineralogy comprise 718 illustrations by James Sowerby in an effort to illustrate the topographical mineralogy of Great Britain and minerals not then known to it. Sowerby’s plates are some of the finest examples of hand-drawn mineral illustrations ever created. The detail and care with which these illustrations were created is incredible and worthy of close examination. See the samples below.

Accompanying each illustration is a detailed descrpition, a list of similar names by other researchers, characteristics, and classification details.”

Nicholas Rougeux spent 4 months creating a digital collage of all the minera illustrations from the British Mineralogy and Exotic Mineralogy collection arranged by color! Here are som links to the project

  • Interactive catalog - https://www.c82.net/mineralogy/#
  • Making of British & Exotic Mineralogy An article describing how the interactive poster was made [web]
  • British mineralogy or, Coloured figures intended to elucidate the mineralogy of Great Britain, Volume 1 - The book [archive.org]
  • Nicholas Rougeux’s blog - Midwest web designer and data artist. [blog] [twitter] [instagram]

A First Course in String Theory

String theory is one of those subjects in physics that is very difficult to even understand the general ideas. At least everytime I’ve asked a string thoerist to explain the ideas I’ve never gotten an easy answer. While looking at the University of Buenos Aires Physics departmente You Tube channel I found a course on string theory. In the first class Carmen Nuñez recommended a book called “A First Course in String Theory” by Barton Zwiebach. She also recommended lecture notes by David Tong. See the links below.

  • YouTube list of “Simetrías en Física” - [youtube]
  • A First Course in String Theory by Barton Zwiebach - Second Edtion
  • David Tong: Lectures on String Theory - These lecture notes provide a detailed introduction to the bosonic string and conformal field theory, aimed at “Part III” (i.e. masters level) students. The full set of lectures notes can be downloaded here and weigh in at around 200 pages. They are now also available on the arxiv. Individual sections can be downloaded below. Last updated February 2012. [web]