The Good Ship Soliton

I'm still having jet lag issues (and need to get up early tomorrow for my talk in Claremont), but let me briefly eat into the Oxford blogging backlog. Today's story is about solitons. Here is (almost) what I wrote as part of an e-mail to my collaborators.

As I mentioned, I was walking along the River Thames with a friend on Saturday. I noticed a boat that was docked and it was called "Soliton". (!!!) I took a couple pictures with my camera, but it's not a digital camera, so I won't know for a while if it comes out. (My friend has a digital camera, so I should have asked for some help.) This will make a great slide for talks (assuming one of the pictures is remotely reasonable)! I was really excited when I saw this, and it also gave me a chance to explain some of my research interests briefly and to tell the canonical story. Although it wasn't the same body of water as the original (though it's not too far off), it should be noted that the Thames is extremely thin around Oxford, so the conditions could very well be right for solitons.


Let me add some stuff here:


One of my collaborators has already requested a copy of a picture.

I could possibly use one of the pictures in the expository article I'm currently (still) writing with Bambi Hu, Dave Campbell, and Norm Zabusky (the co-inventor of the term 'soliton'). I really ought to have gone digital for this...

The body of water in which the "original" soliton was observed is the Union Canal in Edinburgh.

Solitons and 'solitary waves' aren't quite the same, though in the physics literature the normal practice is to use the terms interchangeably. (I do this as well, although in talks I just indicate I'll be doing so. Sometimes the distinction is important and other times it isn't, but it's good to just state at the beginning of a seminar that there is a difference but not for the purposes of that talk.)