City of Bexley To Honor Physics Students for Catching Stephen Hawking Error

PR Log (Press Release) – Sep 04, 2008 – Bexley, OH: The Bexley City Council will honor  three girls and two boys, recently graduated high school students, for being able to detect a mistake that famed physicist Stephen Hawking made that no other scientists had detected. This astute feat was accomplished as part of an experiment conducted by a R&D engineer who did catch the mistake but was puzzled when physicists seemed incapable of noticing it right off.  

Marshall Barnes, director of the SuperScience for High School Physics program, caught the mistake in 2003. He later presented it at a number of conferences but was surprised when he found that, although everyone agreed that it was in fact a major goof on the part of Hawking, it had to be specifically pointed out to them that way first. The reasoning behind this, Marshall determined, was that older physicists are locked in their old patterns of analysis and aren't mentally flexible enough to catch the error. On the contrary, younger minds might - hence the experiment when he presented a class of Bexley High School students with the problem. Five were able to detect it out of about 30 students.

The mistake involved objections over the theoretical model of using wormholes as time machines, a famous model devised by Cal Tech professor Kip Thorne, and cited in many books and on such programs as PBS's NOVA.

The fact that three of the five students were girls, surprised everyone but underlines the often-debated fact that girls can do physics when given the chance and motivation. It also supports further concerns about the future of academic physics, expressed in the book, The Trouble With Physics, by Lee Smolin.

The proclamations will be handed out during the city council meeting September 9th, 7PM  at City Hall, 2242 E. Main Street, Bexley, OH. For more information contact Debbie Maynard at 614 559 4210 or 614 559 4212 or email dmaynard@bexley.org.