Speaker
Description
In this talk I want to convey how quickly we reach open problems with no ready answers, using only a few simple ingredients on the scale of a tabletop (or a couple of them). Drawing on examples from complex systems, fluid dynamics and nonlinear physics, I will describe an approach to physics on the human scale — one that combines experiment and model building, and remains visual and driven by intuition. I will argue that we don't need to go far to find hard problems, discuss how to recognise them, and show that they readily lead to high quality research. IPT problems often resemble real research questions in just this way, and with the right approach the skills and experience gained from the tournament can bring you quickly into active research.