Photo by Janice Bi ‘23
By Janice Bi ’23 & Anoushka Kuswaha ’24
Staff Writer | Science & Environment Editor
“I grew up in a family that valued art a lot — my father is an art historian — so I get nostalgic when I go to museums and churches. … I grew up being immersed in that world,” Spencer Smith, assistant professor of physics at Mount Holyoke College, explained in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. “When it [comes] to physics, it seems completely different [from art]. … But how I initially got into physics was from an aesthetic point of view. … I saw aspects of physics that I thought are aesthetically beautiful. You can think of this in terms of symmetries, [like the] Principle of Simplicity, or you can … [think of] the complexity that can come out of very simple systems,” Smith said.
Studying the intersections of complex, differing fields appears to be Smith’s natural instinct. Smith has taught at Mount Holyoke since 2013, according to the College’s website. In his work at Mount Holyoke, Smith invites students to investigate these intersections and explore the multiple dimensions of physics, a field rooted in analyzing the interactions present in the fundamental makeup of the universe.
This mixing of fields is not found only in Smith’s interest in art and his professional pursuit of physics, but seems to guide him in all aspects of his life, including his research. According to his profile page on the Mount Holyoke website, Smith’s work “characterize[s] the complexity inherent in chaotic fluid motion.” Smith’s study of fluid dynamic systems is highly related to two different mathematical principles: chaos theory and topology.
“Chaos theory is the study of how predictable systems are,” Smith said. He further explained that because a system’s predictability decreases with the passage of time, some systems become fundamentally unpredictable after a certain amount of time. Continuing on, he described the relationship between chaos theory and physics, saying, “This is a big, important thing in physics because a lot of what we do in physics is [to] try to predict the future. … What is this going to look like in the future? How is this going to be in the future?” We may not be able to get answers to these questions all the time, he explained, as systems display increasingly larger uncertainties over time, to the point that specialists are unable to predict or estimate future occurrences in some systems.
“A classic system that people talk about with this is the weather,” Smith said. “There’s a reason why you can’t predict the weather past about seven to 10 days. That’s because the weather is fundamentally a chaotic system. No matter how precisely we get our current knowledge of the state of our atmosphere, we’re not going to be able to predict the weather past about 10 days. Because it’s chaotic. And so it’s a fundamental limit to what we know.” However, chaos theory is not simply an explanation of why we do not know things. With the study of structure and patterns, a better understanding on why and how things are happening could be gained.
Topology, on the other hand, is the study of shape properties, according to Smith. “Topology studies the properties of surfaces that are robust to stretching and squishing and all these other actions,” Smith summarized. For example, topologically, a sphere could be represented as a flat disc, since a sphere could be a flat disc after being squished down.
When using mathematical theory to analyze and study fluid mechanics, its necessary to establish appropriate models for the theory and testing. This is why Smith places value on computer programming skills.
Smith considers himself to be a self-taught computational physicist. Smith believes that the process of programming gives him space for “learning, mastery and understanding for a topic.” He stated, “I always feel that for a physics topic, I only truly understand it if I can write an algorithm to model it or if I can write an algorithm to, in some way, make it computational.”
Smith grew to appreciate computational work and computer science through his work for his undergraduate thesis at Dartmouth College and, later, through his experience working at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Laughing, Smith explained, “[As] an undergraduate, I think I took two computer science classes. I wasn’t a minor in computer science.” Rather, his appreciation of computer science stemmed from a persistent, lifelong “fascination.” In high school, Smith and his friends used TI calculators to program in Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code in order to program cellular automata, such as Conway’s Game of Life, into their calculators. Even through a simple childhood game, Smith said he could observe a “really beautiful set of behaviors that sort of mimics life.”
From programming in BASIC in his teenage years to his undergraduate thesis work and his pre-graduate school experience at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Smith discovered the importance of computer science and its utility in the physics field. Smith is encouraging students to start independent research and to expand their horizons and the number of lenses they can use to learn something new.