Historical Physics Sites

In an initiative to make the public aware of physics and its significance in US history, the American Physical Society (APS) is placing plaques around the country to mark the sites of important physics discoveries.

Five sites have been selected this year. They are Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where Albert Michelson and Edward Morley used their interferometer to show that the speed of light is constant; Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, in remembrance of Henry Rowland, who immensely improved diffraction gratings; the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, to honor Benjamin Franklin for his experiments with lightning and electricity; Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where Arthur Compton did the work on x-ray scattering now named for him; and Yale University, at the site where Josiah Willard Gibbs did his work in thermodynamics.

The APS register of historic sites will be expanded every year. “Once we’ve got the obvious big ones,” says John Rigden, who chairs the historic sites committee of the APS forum on history of physics, “we want to honor more local and recent discoveries too, to let people know that exciting things are still happening in physics.”

To nominate sites for inclusion in the APS register of historic sites, send an e-mail to historicsites@aps.org TF.

Science on stage. Now may be the time to write that play you’ve been carrying around in your head all these years. The University of California, Santa Barbara, is hosting an international competition for scripts about science and technology.

UCSB’s Professional Artists Lab and the California NanoSystems Institute launched the competition. Lab founder and director Nancy Kawalek says, “Our goal is to cultivate appreciation and collaboration between science and the arts, develop art that depicts the technological age in which we live, and foster new, imaginative voices and methods of storytelling.”

The winner will receive $10 000, a staged reading of the script with a cast of professional actors, and access to scientific and theater-related advice. Submissions must be postmarked by 15 December 2005. For more information, visit http://www.cnsi.ucsb.edu/stage . TF