Mar 10, 07 | APS March Meeting 07

So after a week away in Denver, I am finally back home. The convention was a good time, but I was definitely ready to get back (especially after a 12 hour drive through the armpit of America, i.e. west Texas). My time there mostly consisting of going to talk after talk and eating. The larger lectures (as shown to the left) tended to be a bit more interesting, while the smaller, shorter talks seemed to be a bit too specific for me to grasp. While there, everyone was a granted a $40 per diem which allowed me to stuff myself full for practically every meal.

It seemed that there were very few other undergraduates at the poster session (or even at the conference for that matter). Nevertheless, my poster went over fairly well. I was asked many questions for which I could actually give answers. Quite a few people seemed genuinely interested in my research. Some even requested my contact information as well as a pre-print (which I am currently in the process of writing). Also it seemed a majority of the other posters were either experimental or computational. Very few had theory not involving complicated, somewhat messy mathematics.

The hotel we stayed at was nice since it had been newly renovated, but the best part was that it was only a block from the convention center. The decoration was somewhat odd; it was a combination of 50’s retro with babes in toyland which seemed weird at first, but I got used to it. One morning they had a spin-to-win game set up in front of the hotel, and I was just one peg away from winning the grand prize of two free nights stay. Unfortunately, I ended up sleeping on the floor all week since I was a tad late in trying to find accomodations. Apparently other people took care of this back in November. To the left is the view from my room.

All-in-all the march meeting was a positive experience. It is a good time to learn about subjects which you would never otherwise hear about since most research is so specific. This year, however, there were no bombshell discoveries (other than the cracks who have been claiming cold fusion is a reality since the 1980’s). Nevertheless, I still found a few topics of interest: entanglement entropy, the anomalous hall effect, and mram to name a few.