Episode 1. The Physicist Who Sings (Part 1 of 2)

In Part 1 of the interview, Professor Phillips talks about his initial love for poetry and how an aversion for science classes in high school finally transformed into a passion for physics in college. You can watch the entire video podcast on YouTube at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc83Bpg8hEEHuEXWk7qIJm2SbUMbww74j

From an aspiring poet to an established physicist who advised the President on science policies, to an award winning opera singer, Philip Phillips embodies how true success incorporates passion

1:59 My first love was actually English.. I wanted to be a poet.

2:41 I had two interests, math and English...physics allows you to tell stories with math. 

5:51 Don't be frustrated if you don't get it (science) in high school, hardly anyone does. 

6:17 You shouldn't take your first experience as a barometer as to what you are really made of. 

6:25 If you know, you're still asking questions and it's still engaging to you, pursue it. And I think people don't really do that. They look at their results in high school. 

ABOUT SCIENCE, MUSIC, AND SOCIETY PODCAST
A show that explores the intersection of science and music and their benefits to society through personal stories of scientists and musicians.

ABOUT SOPHIA SI
A rising high school senior in Houston, TX, who grew up playing the piano and loving science.

ABOUT PHILIP PHILLIPS
An established professor in the Department of Physics at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (https://physics.illinois.edu/people/directory/profile/dimer and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Phillips_(physicist)) and opera singer who garnered top prizes (1st Place, 2020 National Association Teachers of Singing (NATS), 2nd Place, 2022 American Prize in Vocal Performance http://theamericanprize.blogspot.com/2022/05/national-winners-men-in-opera-and-art.html). His performances can be viewed at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDZpnXiuFA0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSN05n8j09E.

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Transcript

TRANSCRIPT (CONDENSED and NOT ENTIRELY VERBATIM) 

What do you study as a physicist?

I study complex systems. 

Physicists are very good at solving problems when things move independently. The field of physics is pretty much unsolved when things become strongly interacting, (when) things don't move independently. What are the relevant degrees of freedom? 

I study this in the context of what are called quantum materials and the leading problem I'm trying to solve is high temperature superconductivity. I pretty much devoted my career to that. 

What is superconductivity? 

We all know what conductors are. You plug in your cell phone, current flows through the wire. There's a conductor there and conductors all have a certain loss. Superconductors have no loss at all. They carry current without any electrical loss. 

And that's a phenomenon that was discovered in 1911 by a Dutch physicist. And it was explained actually by some physicists here at the university of Illinois. 

Um, and interestingly enough, in 1986, a new class of superconductors were found. And the theory developed here at the university of Illinois was shown not to be valid. So a big question is how do you explain these materials? And that's what I pretty much devoted my career to trying to solve. 

How did you get interested in physics? Was it something you always wanted to do? 

Not really. My first love was actually English. It was writing. I wanted to be a poet. But then I got to college and realized, you have to have real talent to be a poet. It's very hard to be a poet.  In high school I had no idea how, you know, that that was even a hard thing to do. It just seemed like if you have some talent along those lines, you can just do it. Well, not really. You have to path a, you know, a, uh, some sort of career trajectory. 

And so then math, I was always very interested in math. And so I decided to go more along that direction. So I guess I had two interests, math and English. And what I've found is that physics allows you to tell stories with math. So it's kind of like English, but you're still telling stories, in a completely different language. And so when I write papers, I try to make sure that I'm telling a story. I make sure it is a literary experience.

People who read my papers, pick up on that. Yeah. Like they never start with the standard boring sentence. People have been studying this problem for a while. No. I try to get at some sentence that really gets at the truth of the whole field and then it blossoms from there. 

A lot of kids view science and math as something that's really hard and they just feel really discouraged because they feel you have to be really good or you have to be born with some sort of talent to be good at physics and at STEM in general. How true do you think that is? 

I'm living proof that is not the case. I got C's and D's, I think in physics and chemistry in high school, I had no idea what they were talking about. I always got As in math though, that was something I knew, but I had the worst teachers. It was presented in a way that, and I think this is still true. 

The physics teachers generally have been, it's been a long time since they were in school. And what is being presented is not how things work, but just what things are. Ultimately I think I didn't get it because I needed a real explanation. I needed more of a theoretical foundation or any kind of foundation would've been fine, just wasn't there. 

And then when I got to college and I started taking physics and chemistry again, it all seemed so easy because in college you were actually given explanations. So I would say a lot of science is taught very badly, especially the physical sciences in high school. And I would say don't be frustrated if you don't get it in high school, hardly anyone does. And most of the people who were really good at that in high school ended up not going into science.

We all have our different internal ways that we digest material and this becomes clearer to you as you get older. You shouldn't take your first experience as a barometer as to what you are really made of. 

If internally, you know, you're still asking questions and it's still engaging to you,  pursue it. And I think people don't really do that. They look at their results in high school. 

In college, was it just the teachers and just the classes that you took that really changed you or was another factor? 

Well I had matured, I had taken more math. It was clear, math was my thing. If math is your thing, then the physical sciences aren't very hard. Because that, that's typically the thing that people get stuck on, you know, when you're trying to understand some physical concept and you have to go solve an equation. Well, a lot of people go, oh God, I can't do that. But so then once I knew I was comfortable with math, then it was just a matter of focusing what are the physical ideas? And, um, so I found that I could rely on my math background and that wasn't something that was clear to me in high school, because the content seemed to be devoid of any mathematical clarity.

And as I got older, I realized, this really is about math. And so once I could make it about that, then I was fine. So partly it was just getting older and maturing