Bacteria Are Masters of Tai Chi - Issue 37: Currents
▻http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/bacteria-are-masters-of-tai-chi
When I began studying how animals swim, I didn’t feel much like a physicist. I’d just finished my bachelor’s in physics during which time I’d been taught that physicists work on one of a handful of buzzwords: quantum mechanics, cosmology, gauge theory, and so on. To see if graduate school was right for me, I shadowed a friendly research group at the University of California, San Diego—but they didn’t study any of these buzzwords. They used high-powered mathematics to understand things like the locomotion of snails, worms, and microorganisms. I was grateful for the opportunity, and I thought the problems they studied were beautiful and interesting—just not fundamental physics. As I became more involved in the group, this distinction grew into an identity crisis. Theoretical physicists are (...)