Steve Dodge

Physics professor @ Simon Fraser University. Experimental research in quantum materials and optical spectroscopy.

Website: https://www.sfu.ca/lux/
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Pronouns: he/him
Header image: Sun Painting, Bob Miller; © The Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

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Last Notes

2025-09-14 03:07:09 UTC

I think The Onion must have a Cory Doctorow fan on staff
@npub1fdr…lvhs
https://theonion.com/poll-finds-most-desirable-quality-in-romantic-partner-is-being-jacked-centaur/

2025-08-25 15:38:37 UTC

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I’m guessing that this is best understood as a dynamical instability, not as a phase transition? Superficially, it looks like a first-order transition, but the system is out of equilibrium, it’s not clear how luminosity would map onto a state variable, and there’s no obvious symmetry that’s broken.

2025-07-29 05:34:39 UTC

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California has an open primary system, so he’s not running for the party nomination but for a chance at the general. He has no chance of winning, but it’s one of his many stunts to gain name recognition among fellow fascists (a label he has publicly embraced).

2025-07-20 17:58:45 UTC

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Great series! I knew a bit of the story but only in fragments. Question: do you understand why it took so long to understand this symmetry in a classical context? It seems odd to me that eccentricity conservation emerged in the classical context, enabling Pauli et al. to extend it to quantum mechanics, but that the insights from that activity only reconnected with classical dynamics much later.

2025-06-03 21:38:48 UTC

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That would be Fermi liquid theory in my world

2025-05-17 21:03:47 UTC

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In case you didn’t know, Falcke is on this platform. I don’t follow him but occasionally his posts show up in my feed.
Not a good look for PRL.

2025-04-19 06:49:11 UTC

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When I was an undergraduate I was concerned about the role of military funding in physics and how this would affect me if I pursued an academic career in the field. When I asked a professor if he shared these concerns, he waived them away and said he didn’t care where the money came from as long as it led to good science. I remained skeptical, but as I went on I could see what he meant: the US government has supported a lot of good science without a lot of strings attached, so long as the research was aligned with broad strategic priorities. That quid pro quo helped build American science throughout the Cold War, but science was always vulnerable to government interference.
I hear that this book by Naomi Oreskes describes a similar dynamic in oceanography.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo59258933.html

2025-04-19 03:11:41 UTC

This is a nice summary of the historical developments that made universities in the US so vulnerable to the current attack. Gift link.
@npub1nf4…nqe4 , I think you asked about this a while ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/us/trump-universities.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A08.XWaz.l-50GEgDo3Go&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2025-03-22 02:55:03 UTC

I am returning from the American Physical Society (APS) Global Summit in Anaheim, California, which billed itself as the largest physics conference in the world.
In addition to physics talks, I attended a town hall that was interesting. The society leadership seems to be pretty active in doing what it can to counter US Executive actions that harm members, including filing amicus briefs in court cases. They say they are not changing their messaging or their programs, which include several that are designed to underrepresented groups in physics.
The audience questions and comments were pushing them to do more, though, and at times the leadership seemed a bit defensive. I had the impression they felt they were already doing better than their peer academic societies and were working overtime to keep it that way. LGBTQ+ members were visibly agitated, for obvious reasons, and lobbying for more official action on their behalf.
Several senior members, including French Nobel Laureate Serge Haroche, urged them to think outside their disciplinary box and engage with civil society more broadly, on behalf of scientific values. There was a palpable sense that people were seeking solidarity.
I also heard lots of stories of how people’s lives were being disrupted at critical moments in their lives and careers; some were losing funding, others were losing their jobs, and everyone was anxious and worried. It was sad and frustrating, but also good to see people and share experiences.

2025-03-18 02:43:50 UTC

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I get the feeling there’s a magic trick to be made from those properties

2025-03-16 07:34:08 UTC

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The context is that Tressie said that the labor market for people with higher education has created a problem for higher educational institutions. Then Stephens chimed in to say he agreed with her, then launched into a dimwitted rant about baristas with degrees that have the word “studies” in their name (and what words would precede “studies”, Bret?). Tressie was not having it, so she clarified that (a) many people with those “studies” degrees do quite well, thank you and (b) the more important part of that story were predatory low-quality institutions, such as Trump University. That was when Stephens issued that response—it was a shitty “and your mother!” ejaculation that his lizard brain just couldn’t resist.

2025-03-09 05:05:25 UTC

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@npub10lr…nszn
I second Doug’s framing here—I would start by introducing the solid-liquid-gas distinction as familiar but in need of a more precise definition. I would emphasize that the key is to recognize that the most important distinction between these phases is that they are separated by a phase *transition*.
Then I would note that the liquid-gas transition can be avoided altogether in the P-T phase diagram, and point out that this is possible because liquid and gas have the same *symmetry*. I’d then explain that the modern classification of matter prioritizes symmetry, and we’re off to the races with popular introductions to Landau theory, the metal-insulator transition, and topology.
Another thing I would want to mention is that different ground-state symmetries imply different excited states, so crystalline solids have phonons, ferromagnets have magnons, etc. When you add topology, you can get even weirder excitations, with fractional charges such as e/3, or (in principle) quantum statistics that are intermediate between fermionic and bosonic.
I took a look at the Wikipedia entry for “state of matter” and it is a hot mess, suggesting that maybe we should accept that its meaning depends on the context. I don’t really object to the solid-liquid-gas-plasma+ framework, but I don’t see anything fundamental about it.
Lastly, I think a much more important critique of Nayak’s claim is that it remains inconclusive!

2025-03-09 03:52:59 UTC

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I can answer your question about long posts! Move to a different server or lobby the server admins.

2025-03-08 16:06:47 UTC

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Umm… I continue to be confused by your responses here. I started out asking what I thought was a straightforward question about your essay: why seven? And I still don’t know.
If you want to hear my thoughts on how I (or another condensed matter physicist) might communicate about states of matter, that’s a different issue. It’s an interesting question that I can try to answer, but I’d like to understand first why astrophysicists might use the term differently.

2025-03-08 02:41:36 UTC

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I recognize that you are speaking to a general audience and my question arose out of a mixture of curiosity of confusion. I can see why you might think that this usage of “state of matter” might confuse more than it clarifies in this context, but I still don’t understand your assertion that there are actually seven. Why seven, and what is the physical basis for this classification? It wasn’t clear to me from reading your piece.
FWIW, I’d also say it’s arguable whether liquid and gas are different states of matter. On one hand, they are separated by a line of first-order phase transitions, with water being the go-to example that makes the solid-liquid-gas classification seem natural. But on the other hand, you don’t need to pass through this line to change from one state to the other, and they have the same symmetry. Technically, my working definition of a “state of matter” is that it is separated from another state of matter by a phase transition. I can augment that by recognizing states with different topology.

2025-03-06 18:10:22 UTC

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This usage is common in condensed matter physics and I don’t see your objection to it. What is the precise definition of “state of matter” that restricts the number to 7?
Would your opinion be different if he had said “phase of matter”?

2025-03-06 16:25:08 UTC

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If you cultivate a large audience of people who are interested in science by explaining science well, then use that position to make sustained, generalized claims that all of science—and even academia as a whole—is corrupt, echoing the rhetoric of those in power who are attacking science and universities, I would say that merits forceful condemnation from scientists. I’ve enjoyed much of her past work, but view her net contribution as strongly negative and getting worse.

2025-01-06 03:24:22 UTC

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I hope it was clear that I wasn’t suggesting that John meant it as a slight—I know he likes condensed matter! But historically, there were definitely people who put down condensed matter physics because they viewed it as mere application of more fundamental knowledge. Anderson introduced his famous “More Is Different” paper with a quote from Weisskopf that clearly placed “fundamental physics” at the top of a scientific hierarchy that had a corresponding hierarchy for physicists. And after he arrived at Stanford, Felix Bloch was so hostile to condensed matter physics (he called it dreckphysik, or dirt physics) and laser physics that most of the people who worked in those areas formed the Applied Physics department, just at the time that both fields were taking off. This kind of attitude is less of a problem today, but it hasn’t gone away entirely.
Sociology aside, I do think the condensed matter community could do a better job articulating our own view of what we think is exciting and fundamental.

2025-01-05 20:02:14 UTC

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My condensed-matter sensibilities bristle at the association of “fundamental” with the Standard Model and GR here, but I appreciate that you put it in scare-quotes and acknowledge the limitations of this definition. But rather than gripe about it, I guess I should try to come up with a similar list of advances in the fundamental physics of condensed matter! Just not during the coming term….

2025-01-01 00:53:07 UTC

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But seriously, I hadn’t realized that M-theory isn’t renormalizable. Staying tuned for your discussion of the 10^500 (give or take) ways to reduce it to something that looks like the Standard Model.
I’m interested in the perspective that you’re laying out about the Great Stagnation, because the experimental HEP group has expanded rapidly in my department and they don’t seem to like to talk about it much….

2025-01-01 00:04:48 UTC

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You’ve given me a challenge for 2025: publish the phrase “huge pain in the ass” in a peer-reviewed journal to justify a simplification

2024-12-29 00:37:44 UTC

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I suspect Zangwill’s treatment won’t satisfy your desire for a more systematic derivation, but it does show how these limits are useful for practical problems.

2024-12-28 01:27:28 UTC

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Andy Zangwill discusses these limits in his graduate E&M textbook, Modern Electrodynamics. I’m surprised that these were only identified in the 70s—surely people recognized them earlier?
https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/modern-electrodynamics/E5448C70CBF3651B2056F28EBF859AE9#overview

2024-12-26 23:17:51 UTC

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+1 for the more advanced stuff! But I know I’m a minority.

2024-12-04 04:44:54 UTC

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But did they get the job? 😂

2024-12-04 02:31:58 UTC

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A few of my now-emeritus colleagues were Feynman bros, and by all accounts that I trust the department culture was pretty misogynistic when they ruled the roost. Apparently it was common to take colloquium speakers out to a local strip club after their talk. Not sure if this was inspired by Feynman or just behavior that they had in common.

2024-11-14 07:05:16 UTC

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Cory Doctorow has written about Bluesky and enshittification
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

2024-09-15 21:45:26 UTC

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Just today someone posted a nice photo that shows bright supernumerary bands
https://socel.net/@robotwig/113141494674319261

2024-09-15 21:41:52 UTC

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Diffraction does play a role when the droplet size is small enough, resulting in “supernumerary” bands below the main ones.
https://archive.org/details/minnaert-light-and-color-in-nature

2024-09-08 19:32:26 UTC

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Nice article! I look forward to the sequel(s). I’m perennially irritated that the typical “modern physics” course completely ignores statistical physics, and would like to find a way to introduce it earlier. Thinking in terms of frameworks might be a useful framework for that. ;)
It occurred to me as I read your piece that the joint limit k->0, h->0 could be tricky, in light of the Gibbs Paradox. I hope you’ll discuss it!

2024-08-30 21:16:10 UTC

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That’s interesting and encouraging! I just looked up British Columbia and saw that our net intensity has routinely been below 100 tCO2-e/GWh because of our heavy reliance on hydro power (which is basically the same as 100 gCO2/kWh, unless I’m missing something). And recently we’re below 10! 💪🏼
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/industry/reporting/quantify/electricity

2022-11-09 05:15:48 UTC

An #introduction: I am an experimental physicist at #SFU. I am interested in the #optical and #electronic properties of #quantum #materials, and I use #ultrafast #lasers to characterize how they behave when they are #OutOfEquilibrium. I grew up on Coast Miwok land in California, live on the unceded traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people, aka #VancouverBC, and am interested in #academia, #inclusion, #science, #art, #music, #family, and #friends.