Saturday Science Lecture with Stella Schindler on Harnessing the strong force

Saturday Science Spring 2025: Complex Behavior from Simple Rules

Our daily lives are largely governed by a simple set of physical laws: the laws of gravity, put forth by Newton in 1687, and Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism, found by Maxwell in 1861. From these fundamental forces, a vast variety of patterns and strucutures arise: galaxies, rainbows, beehives and more. Much of this is emergent behavior: It’s hard to predict, but once you know it happens, you can look for what makes it happen. In this series of lectures, we will examine the interplay between the emergence of complexity and the reduction to simple laws of nature. Each lecture will begin at 10 AM in Crow 201, which is the physics building with the observatory on the roof. All lectures are free and open to the public. Parking is available in the underground East End Garage. Please note that this series will resume on March 29th, after WashU’s Spring Break. 

Harnessing the strong force: Physics at America's future Electron-Ion Collider with Stella Schindler

In the coming year, physicists will break ground on a powerful new facility, the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The world’s first machine to collide electron and ion beams, the 2.4-mile-long EIC will give us unprecedented insights into the inner structure and dynamics of protons and atoms. In this talk, we’ll explore what we currently know about the building blocks of matter, how everyday particles like the proton emerge from these blocks, and why vast mysteries still remain. We’ll center our focus on how particle colliders help us investigate the fundamental nature of matter, and how the EIC can catalyze exciting new discoveries.