Download from here my notes on vectors, Newton's Laws of Motion, and springs.
George D.J. Phillies <phillies@wpi.edu>
George Phillies was born July 23, 1947 in Buffalo, New York, first son of Eustace G. Phillies, M.D. and Clara Phillies (both deceased). Phillies grew up in Kenmore and Williamsville, New York, finished as salutatorian at the Williamsville Central High School [now Williamsville North], and went to M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While at MIT, Phillies earned degrees of Bachelor of Science in physics and in life sciences, as well as Master of Science and (in 1973) Doctor of Science degrees in physics. Phillies then joined the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program as a researcher.
In 1975, Phillies moved to California, working as a postdoctoral fellow in the U.C.L.A. Chemistry department and living in Santa Monica. Phillies in 1978 moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was employed as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. In 1985, after declining alternatives at nationally-known schools, Phillies moved to the prestigious Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he rose to the rank of Professor of Physics (and Biochemistry Associated Faculty and Interactive Media and Game Design Associated Faculty). Phillies has attained international recognition for his scientific studies of light scattering, soaps, and polymer solutions. [Phillies: ``A polymer is a long thin molecule, shaped like a strand of spaghetti. A polymer solution pours very slowly. An engineer uses the pouring to design machines. A physicist asks `Why do molecules shaped like spaghetti strands pour slowly?']
Phillies' primary service efforts are on the WPI campus, where he teaches, does research, and serves as Faculty Advisor to the Science Fiction Society. Almost all first-rate universities are run by elected faculty committees, and WPI is no exception. Phillies has repeatedly been elected to the most important WPI committees. Some years ago, at a meeting of the WPI Faculty, WPI Provost Diran Apelian opened his remarks `George, you are the conscience of the WPI Faculty.'
Phillies, 62, has never married, and lives in his home in Worcester, Massachusetts. His hobbies include science fiction, game collecting, and gardening. For several years he edited a small-press fiction magazine Eldritch Sciencefor the Greater Medford Science Fiction Society. As a nonprofessional fiction writer, several of his short stories have won awards at national conventions. Several of his completed novels have been published electronically by Third Millennium. He also edited the boardgame magazines American Wargamer, Game!, and Strategist. Phillies collects strategy games and has written (with Tom Vasel) two books about designing board games.
In 1971, Phillies joined the United States Army Reserves, eventually rising to the rank of Specialist, 5th Class, in a Boston unit, the 338th Medical Detachment. He received an honorable discharge in 1977.
Previous political activities: Phillies is an active member of the Libertarian Party, both in Massachusetts and nationally. In 1994, the Libertarian Party gained major-party status in Massachusetts. Phillies has since participated actively in Libertarian Party organizing efforts in Central and Western Massachusetts. In 1996, he was elected Executive Director of the Massachusetts Libertarian Association, and was the party nominee for United States Senator from Massachusetts. In 1998, he ran for Congress as a Libertarian against Democratic Party incumbent Jim McGovern and Republican Matt Amorello. One of his three-way debates was later carried coast to coast on CSPAN-II, 7PM EST, the Thursday before the election. In 2004, Phillies was elected as one of the two Regular members of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts State Committee. In 2008, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire chose Phillies as their nominee for President of the United States and placed him on the ballot.
I spend almost all of my time teaching freshman physics, e.g. PH1111 or PH 1120. I sometimes run homework solutions via the web. If you look at my research publications, you'll see lots of co-authors, most of whom are undergraduates who worked for me. In the foreseeable future, research openings will be available to students interested in theoretical calculations.
My primary research efforts are in the area of complex fluids. Complex fluids are liquids that have interesting structure on several different time or distance scales at the same time. This causes them to have high viscosity, odd flow properties, nonexponential relaxations, and so forth. There are many types of complex fluids; my research focuses on polymers and surfactants.
A major emphasis of my historical experimental studies was the use of quasi-elastic light scattering (QELSS). See my research publications in Analytical Chemistry and in P.J. Elving's book for a description of this method. In many of our measurements, we took a polymer or surfactant solution, and added to it polystyrene latex spheres. The spheres scattered much more light than the sphere-free solutions do, so we could use QELSS to measure the diffusion of spheres through the solutions. The technique, which was pioneered in my laboratory, is known as optical probe diffusion.
I ask how polymers move in solution. Experimentally my laboratory studied the diffusion of probe particles through a wide variety of polymers. We also reanalyzed large parts of the literature on polymer self-diffusion, viscosity, viscoelasticity, and other variables describing polymer dynamics. We have done a series of analytic-algebraic calculations.
Before our work, a large part of the community believed that polymer motion was described by the deGennes-Edwards-Doi (see my research publications for full references) reptation/scaling/model. The deGennes-Edwards-Doi models treat semidilute solutions, which are solutions concentrated enough that the mean distance between neighboring chains is smaller than the radius of the chains. In semidilute solutions, polymer chains interpenetrate and are said to be entangle with their neighbors.
The reptation half of the reptation/scaling model is a guess about
chain
motion. The entanglements between chains are said to constrain the
Brownian
(random thermal) motion of polymer chains, so that chains primarily
move
parallel to their own contours. This motion of a chain parallel to its
own length is reptation. The other half of the reptation/scaling model
is scaling, a mathematical assumption that has nothing to do with
reptation.
The scaling assumption is that measurable transport properties depend
on
system variables via power laws, so that, e.g., in semidilute solution
the self diffusion coefficient 
of
a chain depends on chain length M and chain concentration c
via
In 1986, I proposed a universal scaling equation for polymer
self-diffusion,
under which instead
follows a stretched exponential dependence on c and M,
namely
I (and, later, students) tested my universal scaling equation against a wide range of literature results, not only on self-diffusion but also on viscosity, rotational diffusion, and polymer sedimentation. My equation works well in dilute and semidilute polymer solutions in essentially all systems tested, at least until very large chain concentration and molecular weight are attained. An important consequence of my model, and the surrounding work, is that the reptation model is incorrect in polymer solutions, in the sense that reptation is probably not important in semidilute polymer solutions (melts are a different case). I first gave a talk on this topic at the MRS conference in Boston in December 1986. The European in the audience (not deGennes, who politely asked for copies of my papers) greeted the talk with loud guffaws; the one-sentence-per-talk summary of the conference papers, as published in one journal, covered every paper except mine.
Since then, there has been a complete inversion in opinion. At one recent conference I attended, in which the speaker blandly applied scaling analysis, the questioners noted that reptation/scaling simply does not work in most polymer solutions, and asked the speaker why his solutions should be any different. The speaker had no answer.
An important part of our work has been giving a complete theoretical derivation of the stretched exponential. I can now do most of the derivation, at the level where I can calculate a quantitatively without using any free parameters. By using a low-order series, I am within a factor of two or so in the final answer. In competing theories, scaling prefactors like a are treated as being totally incalculable, and often are not even written down explicitly.
My major research effort for the past few years, and extending to the end of 2010, will be completing my research monograph Phenomenology of Polymer Solution Dynamics, which is under contract with a major scientific publisher. Completion has involved rereading and re-analyzing hundreds and hundres of scientific papers. I think I am still on line to complete by the promised date.
In summary: Once upon a time, there was a received model as to how polymers move in non-dilute solutions. I was the first to say that the received model was fundamentally wrong. My point of view is now widely but not universally accepted.
A wavelet transform is like a Fourier transform, but using a different set of basis functions (sin or cosine waves in Fourier transforms, wavelets in wavelet transforms.) Wavelets are localized basis states, giving, e.g., the intensity at a series of frequencies in a series of regions of time. Musical notation decomposes a tune in a wavelet-like sense; notes are localized both in frequency space and also by their location in time.
We have a project to apply wavelet transforms in statistical mechanics. There are two exemplary papers, applying wavelets to the Ising model, my Jon Stott and I; see my research papers. Applying wavelet transforms to descriptions of regular liquids or glasses appears to be more challenging. More recently, Paul Whitford and I applied wavelet decompositions to spherical harmonic densities of particles in cold two-component Lennard-Jones fluids.
There are many types of complex fluid. An incomplete list includes:
Polymer solutions: A polymer is a long stringy molecule. Even at low concentrations, polymers increase the viscosity of their solutions. However, if you increase the polymer concentration a lot, so that the solution resembles a very thick spaghetti soup, polymer solutions become extremely viscosity. Their flow behavior then depends on how fast you try to move them. Silly putty is a good example of a polymer (albeit not in solution) that shows complex viscoelastic behavior.
There are several ways to divide polymers into classes. An old fashioned division is between synthetic polymers (e.g., nylon) and biological polymers (e.g., proteins, DNA). Under modern conditions, we can make an arbitrary protein or DNA in the lab, so this distinction between artificial and non- artificial no longer identifies the polymers available by artifice. Another distinction is between organophilic polymers, which dissolve in organic solvents like toluene, and hydrophilic polymers, which dissolve in polar solvents like water. Charged (ionic) polymers necessarily are hydrophilic, but neutral (nonionic) polymers include both organophilic polymers (e.g., polystyrene) and hydrophilic polymers (e.g., hydroxypropylcellulose).
Surfactants: Soaps are surfactants. These are small molecules with two ends of differing chemical nature. In a common material, one end is hydrophilic and dissolves in water readily, while the other end is hydrophobic and would prefer not to dissolve in water. At low concentrations, surfactants dissolve in water as isolated molecules or small clusters. At higher concentration, surfactants spontaneously self-assemble into larger ordered structures, such as minimum micelles, thready (wormlike) micelles, lamellar phases, and vesicles. Some surfactant molecules (ionic surfactants) carry an electrical charge; other surfactant molecules (nonionic surfactants) are electrically neutral.
Colloids and proteins are globular bodies of typical size 1- 1000 nm in size. Proteins are polymerized amino acids. Colloids are small bodies that remain stable in solution, even though they are much larger than the solvent molecules or conventional solutes. Faraday studied small colloidal particles made of gold; a sample of his colloidal gold, sealed in glass but over 150 years old, is on exhibit in England. Many proteins are water soluble. While in solution, they are subject to the same physical principles as are other colloidal particles.
Liquid crystals are liquids - pure liquids or molecules in solution - which under the right conditions undergo a phase transition. They remain a liquid, but the molecules in the liquid become lined up parallel to each other, so that there is long range orientational order, but not the long range positional order seen in a crystal.
"Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics" has been published by Springer-Verlag. These are drafts of a few of the 30 chapters and 7 Asides.
Yes, I'm that George Phillies. There are some tax issues concerned with my posting to this platform, but for more information on my political positions, look at the Liberty for America and Central Massachusetts Liberty Coalition home pages.
The other George Phillies's were my late grandfather George E. Phillies (Attorney) and my late father, Eustace G. Phillies. Grandfather believed that he was substantially responsible, via the Justice for Greece Committee, for extending the Marshall Plan to Greece. In the 1920's, Grandfather (I'd be really grateful if someone could provide the cite, and full details; I have only my father's version) broke the Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, at least for New York State. The Doctrine provided that you could not sue the government for damages. The case involved a traffic light which went green in two directions at once. Two perpendicular directions. Once upon a time, at least in New York, if you were injured by the government, you had very limited redress. Thanks to many people, that's been changed for the better. If you now read about someone who has sued the government successfully (for example, my friend Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games, who sued when the Secret Service wrecked his company's computers during their failed effort to suppress publication of a game about computers), consider that my grandfather contributed in a small way to helping this person.
My father was a physician, specializing in internal medicine and hematology. He practiced in Buffalo and regularly made at least a few house calls as long as he was physically able to do so. Father made substantial contributions to society of other positive sorts, for example to organizations for hemophilia sufferers, but he never wanted them discussed in public.
Strategic Games are games with complex rules, arranged so that players see how the real world responds to their decisions. These include games about railroads, businesses, and historical battles. Some of these are played on mapboards using cardboard counters (that's my interest). You can replace the cardboard counters with toy soldiers, usually made of lead, pewter, or another material. (Steven Forbes, Sr., had a famous collection of these.) Some people play games on computers (ranging from arcade games requiring manual dexterity to complex resource management games.) Rolegames are games in which you play a character in a fictional world, a world where magic works or people can fly. (Once upon a time, a correspondent of mine, Gary Gygax, and his friend Dave Arneson wrote the first modern set of these - Dungeons and Dragons. Their rules were originally written as an add-on to rules for fighting battles with toy soldiers.)
I'm mostly a game collector. It's not an expensive hobby; there aren't enough collectors to send prices skywards. I do have one of the more extensive collections of board strategy games in the world and, by a fair margin, the world's largest collection of magazines about strategy games.
I'm faculty advisor of the WPI Science Fiction Society. They meet every week during the school year, have a real library, and run live-action roleplaying games and trips to local events.
Warning: the Laws of physics do not apply in science fiction novels.
Once upon a time, five intrepid adventurers set out from Arlington, Massachusetts, crossing the universe to save the world. They came back a day later. When they got back, they found a different earth. Instead of landing on their earth, they landed on our earth. Based on their knowledge of the laws of science, they came to the obvious (to them) conclusion, namely that someone had gone back in time and changed history, eliminating their world and creating ours. Naturally, they want to correct this. They expect us to help them, and try not to distress us by emphasizing that if they succeed, we will all cease to exist.
Of course, there are a few minor complications. They are from a world where people fly, throw lightning bolts from their fingers, and do other things not consistent with (real world) laws of nature. Their ideas about law enforcement are seriously different from ours - "Vigilantism, a moral duty, not an option". The detail that their America uses the drug laws that the USA had before 1910 (that's none at all) doesn't keep them from starting to enforce ours, with interesting consequences given that their world has judicial telepathy, not the Fifth Amendment. They also range in age from 11 to 12, and are only modestly inhibited by adult ideas about restraint and moral ambiguity.
The text focuses on their personal conflicts. Their world has much deeper male-female conflicts than ours does ("Boys - they're all dumb as posts". (That was Aurora, the mentalist.)) One of them isn't really trusted by the other four because she (Eclipse) is wanted by the League of nations as a war criminal ("Don't worry. They'll give her a fair trial and a slow execution." (That was Star, the one-person tank company.)
In any event, here are the first few chapters, available for comment. You can also get the full book .
The WPI Educational Plan is based in substantial part on a series of projects, each of which is expected, among other things, to give students an opportunity to unify what they have learned from several courses into a coherent whole. My main part in this scheme involves the Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP), most commonly completed by their students during their junior year, and the Major Qualifying Project (MQP), usually completed by students during their senior year.
If you are an undergraduate interested in my currently available projects, skip here for IQP descriptions and skip here for MQP descriptions.
If you are an outsider interested in information about the project system, I offer a very brief summary here. The MQP is basically similar to the senior disciplinary thesis, as required of students at other first-line universities. Unlike many other schools, which require that senior theses be completed by individual students, at WPI it is acceptable (and common or encouraged in some departments) for students to complete a single MQP while working in a group, typically of two or three students. (Most, but by no means all, Physics MQP projects are done by individual students, not groups.) Most of my student MQP projects were performed a level that permitted their later publication in professional physics or chemistry journals.
The IQP is a junior-year thesis project, basically the same as the MQP in scope, expected effort, and allowability of student teams. The IQP is, however, focused on how science or technology interacts with societal structures and values, rather than being focused on science or technology per se. Student IQPs can range quite far. Besides the project described elsewhere on funding in chemistry, I have had successful student IQP projects on technology development in Japan and Korea and on the viability (rather, the lack of viability) of the NASA Space Shuttle.
The following projects are currently available.
I have several projects available involving the study of research and funding patterns in the physical sciences. An objective would be to examine how external funding and other factors relate to research activities (as estimated from publications and grant citations) in academic chemistry departments. Another objective would be to examine how publication patterns, research activity, etc.., are correlated with faculty age, background, etc.. There has recently been change in Federal Laws pertaining to retirement ages (the Feds wiped them out). One might with effort be able to use available information to predict how Federal Laws will affect research activity, and to suggest ameliorative measures appropriate to the expected difficulties.
There is no deadline for this project.
While I would be happy to have several students working on aspects of the same question, I expect each student to write up her or his own report on her or his own work. Writing is critical to future professional success; it cannot be learned by passing responsibility toward a single team writer.
I am open to Terms A-D.
There is some evidence that at least some women do much better in single-sex universities than in coed colleges, as witness the success of Massachusetts schools such as Smith and Wellesley. However, these single-sex schools are largely liberal arts colleges, not research universities. I have a series of available IQPs for studying the costs and other issues involved in creating a new University, that would have an MIT-CalTech standard for its undergraduates,and would do research at the MIT level of quality and quantity, but that would not be coeducational.
There is no deadline for this project.
While I would be happy to have several students working on aspects of the same question, I expect each student to write up her or his own report on her or his own work. Writing is critical to future professional success; it cannot be learned by passing responsibility toward a single team writer.
I am open to Terms A-D.
Participants will contribute to generating the WPI master index of all known computer games, to be mounted on the IMGD web pages. You will contribute to developing the list, refining the typology, and using the information you generate to do an analytic study of computer games.
There is no deadline for this project.
While I would be happy to have several students working on aspects of the same question, I expect each student to write up her or his own report on her or his own work. Writing is critical to future professional success; it cannot be learned by passing responsibility toward a single team writer.
I am open to Terms A-D.
I am available to supervise analytic theory MQPs involving statistical mechanics and the glass transition. Students wishing to do these will need to have a solid knowledge of statistical mechanics -- reading and understanding my statistical mechanics book is a good start.