Thursday, July 9, 2009

A pun and a clarification

If you know the rules of bowling, you will remember that the most you can score in one game is 300 points. Well, there is an old joke about a guy who “bowled three hundred and won” (it’s a pun, it doesn’t work well written: 301 versus 300 and won). This type of linguistic confusion appears to be the source of a rumor that was circulating in the physics community about the exciting data I mentioned last week. To clarify: Eva Andrei observed quantum hall effect in graphene at filling fraction 3 AND at filling fraction 1/3. She did not observe quantum hall effect at filling fraction 10/3 = 3 AND 1/3.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

In the spirit of puns, and as a meta-comment to you comment to the previous post (whew!) here it goes:
why not name your first book "What's the matter with topological phases? Quantum Hall Effects" or something like that. Get it? What's the matter?!

Harr-harr-harr.

Steve said...

Not a bad idea... but I'm not brave enough to name a book that -- maybe a chapter.

Note also that the "matter" pun has been used already on this blog in almost the first entry:

http://complexmatters.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-complex-matters.html