FEATURES PHYSICS
references explained Whenever it comes to teaching the Doppler effect, physics teachers love whipping out that one scene from the Big Bang Theory. It’s Halloween and everyone is dressed as some DC or Marvel superhero, but not Sheldon. He shows up in an ambiguous suit of blackand-white stripes that resemble not those of a zebra, but wavefronts. He is the Doppler Effect. You really wouldn’t
Vanessa offers explanations to the jokes and Yip SFC1 references of everyone's favourite sitcom. Ill u
str
a tio
ns by
R o s a li n d W i g n
a ll - T
orr
y
expect anything less from him. This is just one of the many physics references scattered across the show, and when I was thinking of a topic to write about, I couldn’t resist the idea of explaining a few of these references. There were many I could choose from: in one classic episode, Sheldon hysterically dives around a ball pit and models particles with peas on his plate to come to a (very loud and public) revelation about why electrons behave as if they were massless when travelling through graphene. In another episode, upon encountering an indecisive Penny, Sheldon responds with an elusive reference to Schrödinger’s cat (you won’t know if the cat is dead or alive until you open the box i.e. give it a try because you never know!) Needless to say, Sheldon is my favourite character from the show and is involved in two other references I have chosen to explore in this article: supersymmetry and topological insulators. (I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed doing research as much as I did for this article as it obviously entailed rewatching episodes from the show and getting a little sidetracked…)
Meet Supersymmetry, the new DC superhero The last episode of Season 11 (spoiler alert - skip ahead if you don’t want me to spoil the show for you), “The Bow Tie Asymmetry”, is probably my favourite episode of all time. Throughout the episode, Sheldon repeatedly notices the fact that his bow tie is askew. Minutes before their wedding (which, by the way, Mark Hamill 35
officiates), his lopsided bow tie leads Amy and Sheldon to a pivotal revelation about the work they’ve been doing on supersymmetry. The asymmetry of his bow tie serves as their eureka moment, inspiring them to invent the principle of “superasymmetry”. Unfortunately, while “superasymmetry” is not an actual theory, supersymmetry is a fascinating principle that holds massive potential in explaining three mysteries in physics. To understand supersymmetry, we must first have a grasp of the Standard Model. Much like the physics equivalent of a Periodic Table, the Standard Model outlines the fundamental particles and forces that make up our universe. The fundamental particles include quarks (different combinations of quarks make protons and neutrons) and leptons (electrons, for example). The four fundamental forces include strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational, but only the first three are included in the Standard Model. These forces are a product of exchanging force-carrier particles, and the forcecarrying boson for gravity has yet to be discovered. While this model has been successful in explaining a wide range of experimental results and predicting a plethora of others, there are still gaps left by it that fail to encapsulate all phenomena in physics.
