physics

[grapesmoker]

I edited/wrote all the physics for this tournament, so I guess if you want to talk about that this is the place to do it.

[MicroEStudent]

I enjoyed the physics in this tournament and thought that it was well written.

One minor note regarding the Hall effect question in the Georgetown/ASU packet: is there another word to use for "effect"? Hearing "effect" and then "solid state" I believe makes the answer fairly obvious. I don't have a good suggestion for a substitution for "effect", so there may not be one.

[grapesmoker]

I enjoyed the physics in this tournament and thought that it was well written.

One minor note regarding the Hall effect question in the Georgetown/ASU packet: is there another word to use for "effect"? Hearing "effect" and then "solid state" I believe makes the answer fairly obvious. I don't have a good suggestion for a substitution for "effect", so there may not be one.

Sometimes if I'm trying to be more vague I use the word "phenomenon." I wonder if this might not just be a case of you having really good knowledge, since for me personally those associations don't evaluate to "Hall effect" in any meaningful way.

[MicroEStudent]

I enjoyed the physics in this tournament and thought that it was well written.

One minor note regarding the Hall effect question in the Georgetown/ASU packet: is there another word to use for "effect"? Hearing "effect" and then "solid state" I believe makes the answer fairly obvious. I don't have a good suggestion for a substitution for "effect", so there may not be one.

Sometimes if I'm trying to be more vague I use the word "phenomenon." I wonder if this might not just be a case of you having really good knowledge, since for me personally those associations don't evaluate to "Hall effect" in any meaningful way.

I won't disagree that it may be due to knowledge. It's just that when those two terms are mentioned in a non-Nationals level tournament, the answer is almost always the Hall effect.

[grapesmoker]

I won't disagree that it may be due to knowledge. It's just that when those two terms are mentioned in a non-Nationals level tournament, the answer is almost always the Hall effect.

It hadn't occurred to me, but I will note the conjunction for future reference.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I'm curious what sort of alternate answers were acceptable for "metastable". I negged with "excited state" on the population inversion clue, which seemed to be saying that more electrons are metastable than stable during population inversion. I have no background besides my quizbowl knowledge about this, and have heard population inversion described every time as more electrons being in excited state than ground state. So who was wrong here - me buzzing in at that point, every other question I've heard about population inversion, or this question? (i guess its me until you teach me all i need to know about physics, mister Jerry!) The text of the tossup might help.

[Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat]

I'm curious what sort of alternate answers were acceptable for "metastable". I negged with "excited state" on the population inversion clue, which seemed to be saying that more electrons are metastable than stable during population inversion. I have no background besides my quizbowl knowledge about this, and have heard population inversion described every time as more electrons being in excited state than ground state. So who was wrong here - me buzzing in at that point, every other question I've heard about population inversion, or this question? (i guess its me until you teach me all i need to know about physics, mister Jerry!) The text of the tossup might help.

There weren't any listed, which is a problem. I did the same thing with "superheated fluid" off the bubble chamber clue, right before the question said that the bubble chamber is a superheated liquid.

19. The quantum Zeno effect occurs when a quantum system in this type of state is measured frequently, causing it to remain in that state. This type of state is the operating basis for the bubble chamber, since the superheated liquid hydrogen used in those devices represents one realization of this kind of state. Techniques such as optical pumping
are used to create population inversions in which electrons are placed into these types of states, from which they undergo a lasing cascade. This term characterizes the output of an element such as a flip-flop before it has settled following a transition, and a mechanical example of this type of state is a ball sitting on top of a hill which will roll down the hill if disturbed. For ten points, identify this type of state in which a system is in equilibrium but may easily transition to a lower energy state under any perturbation.
ANSWER: meta-stable [accept word forms]

[Mechanical Beasts]

I'm curious what sort of alternate answers were acceptable for "metastable". I negged with "excited state" on the population inversion clue, which seemed to be saying that more electrons are metastable than stable during population inversion. I have no background besides my quizbowl knowledge about this, and have heard population inversion described every time as more electrons being in excited state than ground state. So who was wrong here - me buzzing in at that point, every other question I've heard about population inversion, or this question? (i guess its me until you teach me all i need to know about physics, mister Jerry!) The text of the tossup might help.

The electrons are individually excited; the system of electrons collectively is metastable. Is that a fair description, Jerry? It's surely a hard thing to specify uniquely with words, so I can more than understand a buzz with "excited" off that clue if you didn't know the earlier clues.

[grapesmoker]

I'm curious what sort of alternate answers were acceptable for "metastable". I negged with "excited state" on the population inversion clue, which seemed to be saying that more electrons are metastable than stable during population inversion. I have no background besides my quizbowl knowledge about this, and have heard population inversion described every time as more electrons being in excited state than ground state. So who was wrong here - me buzzing in at that point, every other question I've heard about population inversion, or this question? (i guess its me until you teach me all i need to know about physics, mister Jerry!) The text of the tossup might help.

Well, the problem with your buzz is that "excited state" is ruled out by previous clues; however, to be generous, I should have probably made that promptable or just mentioned "excited state with this property," in the question.

There weren't any listed, which is a problem. I did the same thing with "superheated fluid" off the bubble chamber clue, right before the question said that the bubble chamber is a superheated liquid.

Sorry about that. I didn't want to drop superheated helium right off the bat in that second clue. I was hoping that the quantum Zeno effect clue would keep people from buzzing with those sorts of answers, but again, I should have made the specific answer promptable.

[grapesmoker]

The electrons are individually excited; the system of electrons collectively is metastable. Is that a fair description, Jerry? It's surely a hard thing to specify uniquely with words, so I can more than understand a buzz with "excited" off that clue if you didn't know the earlier clues.

Eh, I think you can quite easily describe the system as being in an excited state. The concept metastability refers specifically to the fact that a perturbation can knock the state out of local equilibrium. I suppose there might exist excited and stable systems, though it would take someone who gets deeper into atomic physics than me to say whether that's true; my intuition is that in the context of atomic systems at least, every metastable state is also an excited state of the system. However, the converse is not true in general, as seen from the example of supercritical fluids. They are not "excited" in the conventional sense, but they're definitely metastable.

Like I said, I should have made "excited," and "superheated" promptable, and perhaps "unstable" should be accepted as well.

[theMoMA]

The tossup on black bodies was somewhat conspicuous compared to the rest of the physics. It seemed to cut right to the chase with fairly easy clues after the leadin; I don't know if this is a case where a less-than-fully-edited tossup made it into the set accidentally, but that's what it felt like to play. I also thought that the clue about population inversion was slightly misleading. I don't think there's anything wrong with describing it, as you said, as an "excited state with this property" or something like that. I feel like even if you prompted on "excited," you'd probably just turn those negs into prompt-negs. Also, I would have accepted "unstable," at least on the Quantum Zeno clue. Good idea for a tossup though.

I enjoyed most of the physics in the tournament. The bonuses were the type that seemed to reward primary knowledge, sometimes to the extent that they got pretty difficult for teams without a scientist. Looking back, it seemed like there might have been more "modern" particle physics (by that I mean not basic stuff like photons, electrons, etc.) than at the typical tournament (I'm remembering at least three bonuses and the tossup on the strange quark). But that's the sort of drift that happens in a packet-submission tournament and it wasn't detrimental or anything.

[grapesmoker]

The tossup on black bodies was somewhat conspicuous compared to the rest of the physics. It seemed to cut right to the chase with fairly easy clues after the leadin; I don't know if this is a case where a less-than-fully-edited tossup made it into the set accidentally, but that's what it felt like to play.

How'd that happen? There should not have been a tossup on "black bodies." This is almost certainly a compilation mistake, as I distinctly remember editing out that question. What packet was it in?

I enjoyed most of the physics in the tournament. The bonuses were the type that seemed to reward primary knowledge, sometimes to the extent that they got pretty difficult for teams without a scientist. Looking back, it seemed like there might have been more "modern" particle physics (by that I mean not basic stuff like photons, electrons, etc.) than at the typical tournament (I'm remembering at least three bonuses and the tossup on the strange quark). But that's the sort of drift that happens in a packet-submission tournament and it wasn't detrimental or anything.

That was more reflective of what got submitted. I noticed a bit more particle physics in this set overall, and when I thought it was appropriate I tried to stay with the general theme that the submitted questions had.

[Mechanical Beasts]

The tossup on black bodies was somewhat conspicuous compared to the rest of the physics. It seemed to cut right to the chase with fairly easy clues after the leadin; I don't know if this is a case where a less-than-fully-edited tossup made it into the set accidentally, but that's what it felt like to play.

How'd that happen? There should not have been a tossup on "black bodies." This is almost certainly a compilation mistake, as I distinctly remember editing out that question. What packet was it in?

I think I forced it into astro in the two am-seven am crunch. I was aware of the issues with it but I was too bleary to fix them up satisfactorily or replace it, so I tried to make it not totally unreasonable and content myself with that.