The week in physics: Crystallographic phase problem; Two-year colleges; 3D maps of microchips

AI can solve the crystallographic phase problem Forward this email View in your browser THE WEEK IN PHYSICS: 26–30 AUGUST AI can solve the crystallographic phase problem A neural network identifies molecular crystal structures with just a fraction of the data that other methods need. Alex Lopatka Imaging advance enables 3D maps of the smallest microchips With improved x-ray tomography algorithms, researchers can analyze nanometer-scale features inside microchips and improve resolution in other imaging applications. Laura Fattaruso FROM THE VAULT: April 1969 Continental drift Thermal convection within the earth's crystalline mantle provides a mechanism for large‐scale surface displacements. Oceanic ridges occur where the flow of convection cells comes up to the surface; trenches occur where it descends again. Donald L. Turcotte and E. Ronald Oxburgh Two-year colleges play significant role in preparing physics majors Some 13% of US physics bachelor's degree recipients started their undergraduate studies at a two-year college. That's according to data gathered from 3600 members of the classes of 2021 and 2022 who responded to surveys conducted by the statistical research team at the American Institute of Physics (AIP is the publisher of Physics Today). The more advanced the level of physics taken in high school, the less likely students were to have started their undergraduate studies at a two-year college: Among physics bachelors who did not take physics in high school, 40% started at a two-year college, and for those who took calculus-based advanced placement (AP) physics, that percentage drops to 4%. The data come from an AIP physics bachelor's degree recipient follow-up survey. For more information, see the full report at https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/physics-bachelors-influences-and-backgrounds. Tonya Gary FROM THE SEPTEMBER MAGAZINE A quintessential quantum simulator takes a 10 000-fold leap Experiments on the fermionic Hubbard model can now be made much larger, more uniform, and more quantitative. Johanna L. Miller Get notified about our webinars and whitepapers Sign up Get Physics Today delivered for just $25 per year Subscribe Accelerating career connections worldwide for over 75 years BROWSE ALL JOBS POST A JOB CREATE JOB ALERTS FEATURED JOBS Faculty Position in Theoretical High Energy Physics University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA) View Job Chairperson East Carolina University (Greenville, NC) View Job Associate Professor Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Laboratory (East Lansing, MI) View Job Faculty Position (open rank) in experimental quantum information science UMBC (Baltimore, MD) View Job Assistant Professor, Theoretical/Computational Physics Towson University (Towson, MD) View Job Instructor University of Idaho (Moscow, ID) View Job Physics Today is published by the American Institute of Physics 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 USA +1 301 209 3100 © 2024 American Institute of Physics. Unsubscribe  |  Email Preferences  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us