Today I graduated with my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science with minors in Mathematics and Physics! Above is a picture of my family and I after the ceremony (Left to Right: Hannah [Sis], Dad, Mom, Me, Daniel [Bro], & Abraham [Bro]). My oldest sister Faith was the only sibling not present but she will be coming up next week to see my mother graduate with her Doctorate in Nursing (Go mom!) so it’ll be good to see her. It was great to have my whole family there and I really appreciate the support they give me and have given me throughout my life. Thanks everyone, I love you all very much!

Also at my graduation was my beautiful girlfriend Meagan South (pictured above). I’m not sure where I would be without her and I was so happy she came to see me finish a chapter in my life that will launch us both into the next chapter of our life together. I also want to thank her for putting up with all my science-y ramblings I’ve had over the past few years and I hope that she doesn’t mind a few more. I love her with all my heart and am glad we are together!

As some of you might know, I have recently been interviewing at multiple corporations and businesses for my next big move after I receive my Bachelors degree. Well, over the past few months, I have interviewed at a few places: Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Google, Facebook, NASA, & a myriad of small businesses. I passed all of my initial interviews with everyone and was even given the pleasure of being flown out to some of the bigger names like Microsoft in Seattle, WA for onsite interviews. These experiences were quite amazing but I was left wanting much more from many of them. Some didn’t want to pay me what I thought I should be paid and some of the jobs were just plain boring sounding. And some I just plain didn’t make it pass the final interviews! But there was one exception to this. One place that fit like a glove on all accounts. And that was a small business research company in Roanoke, VA named Luna Innovations. My phone interview with them went amazingly well so they flew me to Roanoke, VA to have an onsite interview. I have to say, it was one of the most comfortable situations I had ever been in. Everyone was extremely nice and professional but they were also laid back. I could tell they cared about me as person and not just me as a worker. It was great! I was mostly asked about my diverse background in many areas of science and mathematics. Only a few technical questions were asked and I took this as a good sign. I was called the next morning and offered the job!

So…I am now officially a Research Engineer at Luna Innovations in Roanoke, VA! Meagan and I are moving up there the 22nd of May and we are looking forward to it very much! We already have a townhouse that we will be living in starting June 1st and we can’t wait to move in!

Luna is a contract company for many government agencies: NSA, DoD, DoE, etc. I am not exactly sure what I will be working on yet but I will be working with the Secure Computing and Communications Group dealing with Anti-Tamper technologies in FPGA’s and other microprocessors. Lots of graph theory and applied mathematics are going to be involved so I am super excited about it! I will be able to use both my mathematical and software background in my work which is really what I wanted out of a job!

Last topic of the day… Graduate school for me and Meagan finishing her undergrad. As you might have noticed, we are planning on attending Virginia Tech. I am going to start in the fall as a Commonwealth Scholar (fancy word for people who work full time and want to take classes). I will be taking 1 class a semester for the first year to see how it goes. I am hoping to start with graduate Quantum Mechanics in the fall and finish the sequence in the Spring. I am very excited about taking graduate physics classes and can’t wait to start! I am still in debate if I want to obtain my Masters of Science in Physics or Mathematics as of yet. Right now it is Physics but it could change. I also still want to pursue my love of quantum computing because I ultimately want to pursue that as my PhD specialization but I am unsure yet of the interest at VaTech. Hopefully it will be strong! As for Meagan, she will have to wait a year before she gets in-state status for her transfer. Hopefully that process will work in her favor and she can finish up her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology as a Hokie! Until then, she will be taking online classes at Austin Peay, my recent Alma Mater.

Well, I think that is it for now. I am extremely excited about the next step in my life and I can’t wait for it to start! I have 2 weeks before my first day of work and I’m already itching to start working!

Posted at 11:57 PM on Friday, May 6th, 2011
Filed under: Computer Science, Life, Mathematics, Physics by caleb
No Comments »

This is by far one of the best popular science books I have ever read. Lee Smolin is a brilliant physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics who is able to create a fascinating history of how the main quantum theories of gravity were formulated and the part he played in them. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn some interesting physics. Smolin is very modest in his own contributions to the field of quantum gravity which I appreciated. I do not like picking up a book and hearing about how awesome the author is and why everyone should give them standing ovations for what they have done (cough…A New Kind of Science… cough).

I had the pleasure of meeting Smolin very briefly while I was at Perimeter Institute. He had an office right down from mine and I only wish I could have spoken with him more. Unfortunately, I did not have much time to do so. He is just as interesting in person as he is in the book and I would (and am going to) read anything by him in the future! He is an excellent scientist and I highly recommend any of his works!

Posted at 10:22 PM on Friday, May 6th, 2011
Filed under: Book Reviews, Physics, Quantum by caleb
No Comments »

The author of this book, Seth Lloyd, is quite an interesting person. He is a theoretical physicist and professor at MIT in the Mechanical Engineering department, of all places. He considers himself the first quantum-mechanical engineer and has created quite a neat niche for himself in this realm. I have had the pleasure of meeting him on 2 occasions and his quirky personality and brilliance really do come out in this book!

Seth does a great job in defending one of his very controversial ideas that the universe itself is a quantum computer. Many people do not believe this is an accurate model for the universe based on varying reasons but I tend to like the idea. Seth starts off by gently leading the reader through some basic computer science and physics terminology and bringing the reader up to speed on concepts like Maxwell’s Demon and information-theoretic ideas. He then takes the reader on a winding path of why the universe is itself a quantum computer, ever computing with every collision of elementary particles (he rehashes himself quite a bit in the process, most likely because it is a popular science novel so for the scientific it can get slow at some points).

This idea of the universe being a huge quantum computer is the heart of this book. He portrays each fundamental particle as part of a symphony of bits computing till the end of time. He explains the circuit model of quantum computation and how a quantum computer is indistinguishable from the universe itself, he talks about how the different levels of complexity of system are direct effects from the Big Bang, and many more. All these are fascinating ideas but the real interesting twist for me came when he introduces the idea that this model can easily be used as a model for quantum gravity. This struck me as quite odd. I did not expect this from his book but it is nice to hear his ideas on some of the topics in quantum gravity as opposed to the leader in the field, Lee Smolin (See Three Roads to Quantum Gravity for more).

Overall this book was quite good. It gives a good introduction for the layperson on many things quantum and explains very straightforward how these quantum weird-ities can be used to compute. Even for someone who has a strong computer science or physics background, this book offers a good dose of fresh ideas about information and how complexity is viewed from a purely physical standpoint. I would recommend it to anyone interested in getting into quantum information processing!

Posted at 11:05 PM on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
Filed under: Book Reviews, Computer Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Quantum by caleb
No Comments »

My library has been growing steadily as of late and I find myself not having enough time to read. I get caught up in school, research, life, etc. and just don’t have time to pick up a book and enjoy it. But that is stopping now. I love to read and I love to learn. New books excite me and I find myself wanting to share with others the things I like and don’t like about them.

So, I am starting a new series called “A Book Review” (catchy title, I know) here at Viva la Science. I will showcase a newly read book, or possibly a book I read long ago, and just mention what I thought of the book and such. These books are mostly going to be scientific in nature but they could be works of fiction or even poetry, who knows! It will pretty much be a free for all at times and some posts might be rather short and others long. I might have other posts that stem off of these to talk about specific questions that arose while reading the book or they could be one line posts about how awful the book was and how I never want to open it again… Only time will tell what comes across in this series! I hope you enjoy the series!

Posted at 9:56 PM on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
Filed under: Book Reviews by caleb
No Comments »

**Updated to make up for my ignorance in assuming things about infinite sums…** 12/01/2010

Given the following statement, what would the “logical” answer be:
\[ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + \ldots \; = \; ? \]

Someone without any mathematical knowledge (but knowledge of what the above mathematical symbols mean, of course) will almost without hesitation say 0. But is this correct? Even someone with some mathematical knowledge would jump to this conclusion (like me). I fail to see how this does not equal zero, which one of my professors, Dr. Ben Ntatin, thinks is so…

So here is his “proof” on the matter. Now I am no expert on analysis or algebra so maybe I am missing a fundamentally logical proof or something. So, here we go…

We start off with some statements that we accept as true:
\[\begin{aligned}
0 & = 0 \\
0 & = 0+0 \\
0 & = 1 - 1
\end{aligned} \]
And we assume:
\[ 0\;=\;0+0+0+0+\ldots \]

Okay so everything seems fine thus far. But lets start delving a little deeper:
\[\begin{aligned}
0 & = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + \ldots \\
0 & = (1-1) + (1-1) + (1-1) + (1-1) + \ldots
\end{aligned} \]

This is a legitimate statement given the rules we accepted as true above. All I did was replace each 0 with (1-1). My next step should be familiar to someone with a little mathematical background with the knowledge that real numbers are associative under the binary operator + (and also the fact that – is the same as + with the negative reals). So, we have associativity:
\[ (a+b) + (c+d) + (e+f) = a + (b+c) + (d+e) + f \]
All I did was rearrange the order in which I added the numbers together. This is a perfectly legitimate mathematical statement. But this is where my quarrel starts. Even if you move the parenthesis over one number as I did above, you will always have one number on the end that matches up with the beginning term. We now look at the above rule with Dr. Ntatin’s next step:
\[ \begin{aligned}
0 & = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + \ldots \\
0 & = (1-1) + (1-1) + (1-1) + (1-1) + \ldots \\
0 & = 1 + (-1+1) + (-1+1) + -1 \ldots \\
0 & = 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 \ldots \\
0 & = 1
\end{aligned} \]
Thus we have reached a contradiction so our original assumption of:
\[ 0 = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + \ldots \]
is wrong. But I don’t think that is true. I don’t think the algebra is correct above. I am still sticking to the fact that if you shift the associativity in the sum, you will still always have a term on the end that cancels out that first number in the sum. Because each zero is replaced by 2 numbers, 1 and -1, then you will always have an even number of numbers. So, you will always have a matching number to cancel out the first.

Now this is where I will admit that the concept of infinity is not at all intuitive. When studying mathematical analysis, there are things that make sense mathematically in the finite but do not make sense (and in some cases cannot be done) in the infinite. Maybe my reasoning above does not hold up because of this. Maybe my thinking of “grouping” infinitely many groups does not make sense. Maybe my thinking of there being an even number of 1′s does not make sense either because it is an infinite sum. I am at a loss…

Posted at 4:26 AM on Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Filed under: Mathematics, Philosophy by caleb
No Comments »