The Goeppert Mayer Gauge

We're finally back, and this time we're talking everything thermal! After some brief updates, we dive into blackbody radiation, Planck's law, and selective emitters. Then Jay explains how to use these concepts to design incandescent lightbulbs that are actually twice as efficient as LED bulbs. Then we move on to one of Jay's all-time favorite ideas: passive daytime radiative cooling. And things get even crazier when Jay explains how to use the universe as a really great cold reservoir in a heat engine to get harness solar energy without any photovoltaics.

We're celebrating Dugan's recent JACS paper on copper-catalyzed photocycloaddition reactions by doing a Back 2 Basics episode on photocycloadditons that is really just an episode on that paper with a little bit of Woodward Hoffmann rules thrown in for good measure. But what is a podcast for besides self-promotion anyway? We return to some of our favorite topics, including X-ray spectroscopy and transient absorption, and discuss how a combination of spectroscopic techniques can be used to deduce photochemical reaction mechanisms involving transition metals. We also ask ourselves how a single methylene group can drastically change the fate of a molecule and how a single pandemic can drastically change the fate of a research project.

In this episode, we talk about ways in which light-matter interactions are revolutionizing surgery. We are joined by Christie Lin, VP of Research at OnLume - a startup based in Madison WI dedicated to improving patient outcomes through innovations in Fluorescence Guided Surgery (FGS). Christie prompts us to revisit some of our favorite topics, including SWIR fluorophores and gamma rays, and she also introduces us to regulatory policy for combination drug and medical devices! The results of our first ever Twitter poll are announced, and we finally answer a question that has been vexing us since Episode 1: How DO you focus a proton beam? The answer might leave you speechless.

We're unbelievably honored and excited to have the legendary Prof. Katja Lindenberg on the show to take us through her life in physics and physical chemistry. We talk to Prof. Lindenberg about her early life and education, her transition from mathematics to physics, and of course her incredible 50 year career at UCSD, during which she used "the language of science" (statistical mechanics) to describe problems involving random processes in nearly every discipline you could possibly imagine. We also get to hear a few stories about some of her first friends and mentors at UCSD, Maria Goeppert Mayer and her husband Joe Mayer!

We are joined by Prof. Lea Nienhaus from Florida State University to learn about photon upconversion with perosvkites, a strategy for increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic energy conversion among other applications that her group has pioneered in the last few years. We also talk to Lea about her science communication project, "Kitchen Spectroscopy", that she launched at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that empowers people to discover the plethora of "glowy things" that can be found at home.