Cool physics

To digress from AMO physics for a moment, I want to talk about scattering. AMO theory is cool; I guess to be more precise, it's ultracool. ;) But let's face it--BECs, and quantum corrals, and all the things we study are pretty exotic. Every now and then I like to pause, and look at scattering problems which occur in the everyday world (I mean, outside of the physics building).

This article in Physics Today deals with the use of sonar scattering to take a census of fish populations!

Multiple scattering has also found applications in ornithology, in the groups of Richard Prum, a biologist at Yale, and Rodolfo H. Torres who is in the math department at the University of Kansas. In collaboration, the two study scattering from "quasi-ordered arrays," but the arrays are biological ones--parallel collagen fibers. In their research they examine how interference leads to structural coloration in bird feathers, mammalian skin, etc. and they conclude that the scattering is coherent rather than incoherent.

See also this web page on the scattering of sound by zooplankton.

This is one of the things I love most about physics, that similar physical phenomena occur in an incredible range of systems.