The Deutches Museum in Munich has a grand variety of exhibits to explore. We learned about chemistry, microbiology, music history, and many other fascinating items significant to German culture.
My favorite exhibit from the guided portion of our tour was the section dedicated to transistors and laser technology. This past spring semester, I took a course titled “Design, Simulation, and Fabrication of Microelectromechanical Systems,” or MEMS for short. Participating in that course alongside Modern Physics really opened my eyes to the multitude of captivating niches within engineering physics and provided an entry-level understanding of the exhibit our guide, Alex, spent about 20 minutes on.
Alex went over the history and function of these devices in sufficient detail, then expanded our knowledge further regarding the economic and international complexities of developing these technologies. He mentioned that everything in science that appears to be exponential at first in terms of efficiency with respect to time usually is an illusion and actually follows the trend of an S-curve. That is, there is a limit to how far we can go. For example, it will not be possible to manufacture silicon transistors that take up less space than the atom’s lattice parameter.
Whether we work around this issue by reinventing the technology or remain stuck for several millennia, the progress we’ve seen with computing technology is a crucial aspect pertaining to the advancement of our civilization as a whole. I hope to see more sci-fi technologies come to fruition in my lifetime, and I wish to see this in a way that promotes life rather than destroys it.
First, I am glad to hear about your connection between previous classes and the tour. I too agree that Alex went into more than sufficient detail about the exhibitions, I also was intrigued to learn more about science portion. I felt that for you this tour was extremely comforting as well as helpful to your understanding of science. I wish I had been able to understand a bit more of the material as you, but nevertheless I am glad you were able to take so much away from the tour!
ReplyDeleteHi Tyler,
ReplyDeleteI thought Alex was an amazing tour guide too. I loved when we started talking about quantum mechanics and how energy is emitted from electrons going to different energy states. Me and kaitlynn had been talking about that topic the night before so it was really cool to hear him explaining it to us on the tour. I think it’s awesome you were able to relate what he was talking about back to your course work, it kind of makes the education we suffer through almost seem worth it when you can relate it to things outside of class!
-Grace Semaan