Physicists Cast Anchor In Baltimore

The 7,200 or so scientists who attended the American Physical Society's (APS) March meeting last month appeared to have physically conquered quantum mechanics, somehow managing to exist in several places simultaneously. Or at least that's how it looked to an outsider with a tenuous grasp of rudimentary physics.

The Baltimore Convention Center's hallways and massive open spaces were so full of people chatting, buying coffee, and typing away on ubiquitous laptops that it seemed as if no one could possibly be attending sessions. But a quick peek into any of the symposia revealed rooms packed with attentive physicists listening to talks on everything from condensed-matter physics to evolution.

Attendees still found time for less erudite pursuits, including a physics sing-along hosted by Haverford College's Walter Smith. The event's brainy ballads included "The Relativity Song," set to music from "The Little Mermaid," and "The Love Song of the Electric Field," sung to the tune of "Loch Lomond." The tradition of singing songs about physics at social gatherings of physicists can be traced back to Scottish theorist James Clerk Maxwell, who in 1852 rewrote the lyrics to "Comin' through the Rye" so that the song was no longer about two lovers meeting but rather about the physics of collisions.

Both singing and nonsinging chemists, particularly those fond of graphs and equations, could find plenty to interest them in the 6,800 papers presented at the meeting. <!-- info box start -->