On Tuesday the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics was announced, going to Nambu, Kobayashi, and Maskawa for their related work on symmetry break in high energy physics. I won’t go into any detail (and at this point I probably can’t go into much detail as it’s been so long since I wore a high-energy physics hat), but I noticed something rather funny on the morning news.

This being “Chicago” it was big news that one of the prize winners was in the physics faculty at U of Chicago (Nambu). The reporter tried to convey the idea of what symmetry breaking is with the pencil example. However, he kind of mixed up the explanation and his mistaken interpretation then propagated through the rest of the newsroom as others tried it.

The idea is this : Suppose you have a symmetric pencil and you stand it on end on a flat surface. All things being equal, there’s no reason it should fall any particular direction. But eventually some air currents or vibrations are enough and it falls over. It has to fall a particular direction, but before hand there’s not necessarily a direction that it should fall. Now that the pencil is on its side pointing a particular direction we say that the earlier symmetry is broken. Since there was no way to predict which direction it would fall we say the symmetry was broken “spontaneously.” Say it fell pointing due east. It could just have easily fallen pointing north, south, west, or any other direction.

Anyhow, the reporter had been told the example and managed to get the part about the pencil falling. However, he didn’t understand what was meant and instead described it as a pencil being held perpendicular and being dropped. This in turn led to the news-casters (including the weatherman) dropping pencils and pondering an incorrect notion of symmetry breaking. I suspect he was told the example (perhaps he even asked someone!). However, I think this was clearly a case where showing someone the example would have produced a much better result. Anyhow, I got a real kick out of seeing them drop pencils. sigh...

That said, the award brings with it the whole host of questions and detractions. Why pick a particular subject and not another (I was hoping for condensed matter such as Pendry for the negative index of refraction work)? And even within that sub-field and the idea it’s being awarded for, there are usually several individuals all of whom made significant, major contributions. How do you decide when so many are involved? For symmetry breaking in high energy or nuclear physics, why not Cabibbo? why not Higgs (he missed out on it in 79)? Why not Goldstone? The 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry certainly was close to home though! I was throughly giddy about it (though again the same questions apply). All in all though, I’m much, much happier that we have the prizes (though there should be more) despite the nagging questions.