
Britney Spear's Guide to Semiconductor Physics (2000) - jdmoreira
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
======
jeffwass
Ha, I am surprised to see that page on HN.

I remember finding this way back in 2002, after making my own "Quick and Dirty
Preview of Solid State Physics". I had to make this site for a seminar class.
Basically each student had to present on some general physics topic and then
make a webpage for it.
[http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~jeffwass/2ndYrSem/slide1.html](http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~jeffwass/2ndYrSem/slide1.html)

Made me realise after coming across the Britney Spears page, the brilliance of
basing a potentially dry academic presentation around a pop culture celebrity.

Eg, another pop cultural site/meme around that time was MC Hawking (E=MC).
Some guy made gangsta rap tunes using a voice synthesiser similar to Stephen
Hawking's, with loose physics references.

Btw - in my seminar class, the best presentation (maybe the only one I
remember) was by one dude (now a professional astronomer) who interspersed
graphs of cosmic inflation with pictures of an inflatable sheep sex doll. The
prof wasn't too pleased. Not sure where that webpage is nowadays...

~~~
alsetmusic
The style of music you're referring to is called Nerd Core. I had a friend who
was really into it and he took me to a show about ten years ago. Lyrics ranged
from video games to math and physics with clever word play and a lot of "in"
jokes targeted at the intended audience. I had fun and could see why my buddy
enjoyed it so much.

~~~
nickpsecurity
A few sent some of those to me. Here's one that's not so bad that describes
many [criminal] hackers' lives from start to rough parts to reform.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am9Ctf20nS0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am9Ctf20nS0)

It was different and enjoyable hearing someone rap with terms nerds would
recognize. Now, we just need someone with the talent of a big-name, pop singer
doing it. :)

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fegu
I feel sad that the CV of this obviously talented physicist shows that he has
spent the last 8 years working in search engine optimization for e-commerce
websites. I wonder if society would not have benefited more if someone without
a physics PhD took his job and he took one involving physics.

~~~
jschwartzi
First we would have to find a research job which paid as well as SEO jobs do.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Academic jobs have a lot more going against them than just the pay tho.

~~~
Grishnakh
Like what? From what I'm told by friends who are actually _in_ academia, it's
a pretty horrible environment because it's nearly impossible to get tenure any
more and the competition is ridiculous, and then there's the whole "publish or
perish" thing. The rewards just aren't worth it any more.

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calinet6
You mean, Swift on Security wasn't an original idea?

~~~
nailer
It was all borrowed from [http://www.routergod.com](http://www.routergod.com).
They had Britney doing OSPF, Christina Aguilera on BGP, Mulder and Scully on
IOS basics. All in Character. Whoever writes Securitay is probably an old BSD
nerd.

------
marshray
Oh sure, you can find explanations of good conductors and semiconductors all
over the web.

But what I have never found is an explanation of poor conductors: _How_ does
electric current through a (non-super-) conductor convert energy to heat?

~~~
marshray
These are two great responses, but they seem to be saying opposite things.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877128)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877121)

One says electrons bump into electrons, the other says electrons bump into
non-charge-carriers. Someone on Twitter said it was phonons.

I guess I can kind of imagine a pachinko machine, but this is all very
unsatisfying. :-)

Edit: From the Wikipedia link: "Charged particles in an electric circuit are
accelerated by an electric field but give up some of their kinetic energy each
time they collide with an ion"

I mean, electrons are very very lightweight and tend to move quite slowly for
typical currents. How much kinetic energy can they give?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I mean, electrons are very very lightweight and tend to move quite slowly
> for typical currents. How much kinetic energy can they give?"

I only have a layman's understanding of this whole process, so I could be
missing some important details, but I believe it's necessary to look at the
atoms as a whole rather than just the electrons...

Consider, the electrons (from the outermost orbit of the nucleus) are
travelling from atom to atom (the ease by which they can come and go
determines how conductive the material is).

During this process, when an atom has more electrons than its stable state it
is negatively charged, and when it has less electrons than its stable state it
is positively charged. The greater the polarisation between the positively-
charged atoms and the negatively-charged atoms, the more electrons can move
through the material. I believe the potential difference between the poles is
voltage, and the volume of electrons flowing at a given time is current, but I
could be wrong on that.

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woodandsteel
Then there is Danica McKellar from The Wonder Years, who really did get a
degree in mathematics, and has written several books on the subject for young
girls.

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cpncrunch
I was wondering "who the heck is the Britney Spear person", but submitter just
put the apostrophe in the wrong place.

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BostonEnginerd
This was one of the more helpful resources I found in 2001/2002 when I was
taking semiconductor physics.

~~~
lordnacho
Same here. Same years even. I remember having a laugh and then realising it
actually isn't made up gibberish.

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ccvannorman
For a second I thought I was going to hear auto-tuned voice-overs of Britney
songs replaced with Semiconductor Physics lyrics.

I was disappointed. You have room to grow, britneyspears.ac.

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geyang
lol this is an old one. I remember my advisor who was then a postdoc
recommending it to me five years ago.

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thehacker005263
*Spears'

~~~
tomkwok
> *Spears'

No. Spears's

