Some thoughts about STEM on Steem - bonus: a complete introduction to particle physics

in #steemstem7 years ago (edited)

What can we, scientists, do for Steem, and in particular what can we do that others cannot do as easily? I have thought about it a lot (i.e. more than usual) during this last month (I think some may guess why). There are three parts to the answer to that question, in my opinion.


[image credits: Geni]

First, we can bring Steem in very special places where the general public does not necessarily have easily access.

For instance, SteemSTEM brought Steem underground, in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and I think one can proudly say that this is one of the most unexpected Steem meetup that has ever been organized.

This is our way to promote Steem, as some of us have connections in the academic world allowing this to happen.



Second, and this is what we are really trying hard with @steemstem at this very moment, we can develop a community of STEM-lovers on the Steem blockchain. By community, we both refer to scientists who can share their knowledge and their work, and people who just like the STEM fields and discuss about them. More into details, this includes, among others, helping good STEM content to get visibility on the blockchain, promoting engagement amongst the members of the community and thrive them on taking care of each other, comment the posts of each other, etc.

Finally, as scientists, we can also design lecture material and put it exclusively on Steem. Those lecture notes would be freely available and could be useful for people in particular outside the Steem ecosystem. They could consist of one of the numerous handles to attract people from the outside and grow both our SteemSTEM community and the Steem platform with valuable member.

I personally think those points are where we can make a difference!


I now take the opportunity of this post to summarize below the different chapters of the first lecture notes I delivered on Steem, about introducing particle physics to Steem.


AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICLE PHYSICS ON STEEM


[image credits: Fermilab]

For the first steemSTEM meetup at the Large Hadron Collider, I created lecture notes that I have posted on the platform. This consists in a complete course that I am usually giving to the general audience when I am invited to do so. These lecture notes had never been written down anywhere outside my mind before 3 months ago. With this (final) post, I provide the table of contents to get them easily.

  1. The structure of matter. In this first post, I break down the atomic structure until its most fundamental level. The 12 fundamental fermions of the Standard Model (and the associated antiparticles) are introduced, together with their connection with atoms.

  2. The fundamental interactions. In this second post, I discuss the fundamental interactions and how we can model the way the elementary particles interact by means of symmetries called gauge symmetries. The so-called gauge boson mediating the fundamental interactions are introduced.

  3. The Higgs boson. This Higgs boson is the star of this third post. I shortly discuss how it has been theoretically introduced and also why it was introduced. Due to its importance, the Higgs deserves his own chapter :)

  4. Theory predictions in the Standard Model. It is now time to explain how theoretical predictions are made. I introduce the concept of Lagrangians and Feynman rules, and I also explain the technicalities lying behind predictions for the LHC, how equations are linked to numbers to be compared to data.

  5. Going beyond the Standard Model. An important part of all particle physics research activities addresses what is going on beyond the Standard Model. In this post, I discuss the limitations of the Standard Model and why we are motivated in going beyond it and unravel new phenomena. And I also explain why it is hard to do at the LHC.

  6. The basics of particle accelerators. It is time to leave away the theory domain and explain how our big accelerators, such as the LHC, work. I also highlight the numerous world records obtained by the LHC.


[image credits: CERN]

7 . Objects to be detected at the LHC. In this post, I adopt the viewpoint of a detector and introduce how the different particles can be detected at a collider experiment, or in other words what are their signatures that can be recorded in detectors like ATLAS and CMS.

8 . Particle physics detectors and their onion-like structure. After discussing the objects, time to discuss the machines that have been built to detect these particles. The ATLAS and CMS detectors have been built as onions, each layer having a dedicated role. Putting all layers together, one gets information about what is actually going on in real collision.

9 . The experimental quest for the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson was one of the main motivations for the LHC physics program and was also the expected milestone on the road to the discovery of new phenomena. In this last post of those lecture notes, I describe how the hunt for the Higgs boson took place during the last 30 years.

If you think any chapter would be missing, please let me know. I would be more than happy to write them!


SteemSTEM is a community-driven project that now runs on Steem for more than 1.5 year. We seek to build a community of science lovers and to make the Steem blockchain a better place for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

More information can be found on the @steemstem blog, on our discord server and in our last project report. Please also have a look on this post for what concerns the building of our community.

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Well said @lemouth. SteemSTEM is really doing what other groups on the steem blockchain are not doing and it feels great to be part of this great project.

In countries like mine, one limitation in carrying out a study is having access to literatures. Most go for a particular fee(In well developed countries I'm aware the university helps out in this respect). Imagine what happens when you need like 10 or more of them and you still have to spend in other areas of the project.

Having free lecture notes on the blockchain will go a long way to helping people in various ways. Students can better themselves and professionals can expand their knowledge.

Thanks so much for the effort to help people grow.

Highest regards!

Thanks for your comment. You may want to check what I answered to @greenrun with respect to finding lecture notes for free. Lecture notes are indeed in principle easy to find on the web. But I think having a kind of repository here could be helpful, in particular with lecture notes designed for the people using the Steem blockchain!

nice read!

Thanks. But why self-upvoting such a comment so hard? I disagree with those rewards...

What you did there is great, I read other comments that mentioned the same of what I am about to say but I think it is challenging for users the "discovery" of these posts. It would be great if in the coming months/years we will also have more search and organization tools, for example it would be fantastic if a user was able to make custom lists of posts or add search filters such as "visualize only posts voted by steemstem" or even make shared lists

We are working on it, more information will appear soonish ^^

If only steemit had the option to organise all your posts in lists and categorize them in tabs, things would be so much easier.
Imagine university students turning to steemit for resources. Professors and teachers (primary and high school) using steemit as a pool for material or a place to reach out to other educators and students and work on collaborative projects among universities and schools around the world. And at the same time make money through cryptos to fund those projects.
There is so much potential. Steemit is a medium of great power. Let's hope that people will make the best use of it :)

If only steemit had the option to organise all your posts in lists and categorize them in tabs, things would be so much easier.

We will come with something... soon... :)

Imagine university students turning to steemit for resources. Professors and teachers (primary and high school) using steemit as a pool for material or a place to reach out to other educators and students and work on collaborative projects among universities and schools around the world. And at the same time make money through cryptos to fund those projects.

I can really imagine that, but not for now. A lot of development is still needed to make the platform teacher-friendly... Hmmm maybe this is something we should develop ourselves at the end of the day.

We will come with something... soon... :)

Oh, that sounds exciting! I'm all for anything that can make finding good material on Steem easier :)

Working on it. We will drop some hints about that very soon ^^

Oooh! Now I am anxious!! :D

I'm looking forward to finding out what you have planned! Is it a personal project, or something from #steemstem?

This is something from steemstem :)

the option to organise all your posts in lists and categorize them in tabs

Rooting for this!

As I said, patience :)

Well said @lemouth, there are many things we as scientists can do for Steem. Personally I believe that immortalizing technical information on the blockchain where there's no censorship involved would result in the creation of a free library available for all internet users, which would in turn promote true justice and freedom of information and at the same time attract more and more investors in the Steem ecosystem.

Of course, as you rightly pointed out, engagement is essential. Caring for one another is what we all should do in all aspects of life anyway. I also strongly agree that tutorials and lectures in the form of blogs would serve the community's best interests.

Regarding your lecture notes, thanks for sharing this as I've missed out on many of those.

Ps. I think the 3rd link (The Higgs Boson) doesn't work.

Personally I believe that immortalizing technical information on the blockchain where there's no censorship involved would result in the creation of a free library available for all internet users,

In physics, we have the arxiv for this. I would keep steem as a very good medium for communicating about science, but I won't use it for publishing actual research paper. You need something made explicitly for scientists (check scipost for instance) that is more controlled. Otherwise, how to distinguish the good from the bad? Who is deciding what is good and what is bad? Blog posts are one thing, but actual research is another thing.

PS: Thanks! I will fix it immediately!

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you certainly get the discussion rolling, mon ami

don't mind if i resteem every post you make if you dont start popping one out every hour, b/c i think #steemstem is by far one of the best initiatives , ubi aint half bad either, steemstore and the services for hire tag, theres plenty underneath the foam

you have seriously access to CERN ? like THE collider ? i suppose there's no guest passes for the lottery available :D , if i stick around long enough i might actually get a grip on this, thank you very much !!!!!

Please resteem any post you would like to. I have nothing against that. And thanks for the nice word about stemstem :)

you have seriously access to CERN ? like THE collider ? i suppose there's no guest passes for the lottery available :D , if i stick around long enough i might actually get a grip on this, thank you very much !!!!!

Well, I have an office there. That helps :)

For the moment, there is no way to go down as the collider is running. But a long shutdown is coming and there will be plenty of time for visiting!

The value of STEM is the first page on Google Search for Steemit!

This is what we can do and how we should promote quality content. If the Steemit = quality content, steem/SBD = something valuable.

In my case: "endemic animals balkans" is the 3rd hit, just below the Wiki. I know, this is very unlikely input for the search engine - but we got it.

Or in case of @lemouth: "crash course particle physics" - the first hit on page 2, because the page 1 is full of YT videos. This is an incredible success.

I could bet that we hodl at least 100 "Page 1" for various scientific topics. That's the value that should be recognized

I was not expected my series to be that successful. I will sleep well tonight. I agree with everything you said by the way, concerning the value. Our content can make the steem/sbd value higher in attracting user to steem.

Thank you for all your lectures, I'm slowly going through, well I'm about 1/3 through.

I always liked particles physic, as long as it is presented in layman terms. I will not lie that I understand everything, some of it is over my head, but over all I understand good enough. Besides, once I'm done I will re-read everything again. Great stuff, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for commenting. If you want clarifications about anything, please let me know! It will be my pleasure to answer you.

Well, another thing we can do is organize occasional stuff to bring science to those who can't afford it. It doesn't have to be big either. Take for example this story I heard today:

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-01/ghana-man-goes-viral-for-teaching-computers-without-computers/9498100?pfmredir=sm

Ok, Microsoft already took over him already but I think it would have been super easy to collect a thousand bucks through donations and 2-3 posts and get him a couple of cheap computers :D

I agree, but we should not create something new when existing associations are already there and seek for help. We should join our forces. For instance, this particle physics one which I will start helping soonish (this is not the one I mentioned in the other post; I am not helping a single organisation) ;)

This is a good initiative, I will be happy when steemit finally become a good alternative to researchgate, at least this will generate additional traffic.

I don't use research gate, so that I don't know. I personally use Inspire and its connection to the arxiv database (that are both open access).