Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant: The Essential Role of Metaphor in Constructing Physics

The common understanding of interdisciplinary work is that it is a partial merger of two related disciplines, such as history and philosophy or chemistry and biology. This understanding does not account for the interdisciplinary work possible between seemingly disparate disciplines, such as physics and poetry, and as a result this ignores the immense potential of true interdisciplinary study. Interdisciplinary work has the power to further research, better educate students, and redefine the script that dictates which people are allowed within certain disciplines, allowing for more diverse and inclusive fields of study. Zastrocky looks at metaphor in physics as a way of arguing for interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration across the science/humanities divide. This includes synthesis of research on metaphor and its implications for being a physicist, communicating as a physicist, and educating in physics. It also includes education research where Zastrocky examines the effects of poetry on the problem solving ability of introductory physics students

AGN STORM 2. I. First results: A Change in the Weather of Mrk 817

We present the first results from the ongoing, intensive, multiwavelength monitoring program of the luminous Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 817. While this active galactic nucleus was, in part, selected for its historically unobscured nature, we discovered that the X-ray spectrum is highly absorbed, and there are new blueshifted, broad, and narrow UV absorption lines, which suggest that a dust-free, ionized obscurer located at the inner broad-line region partially covers the central source. Despite the obscuration, we measure UV and optical continuum reverberation lags consistent with a centrally illuminated Shakura–Sunyaev thin accretion disk, and measure reverberation lags associated with the optical broad-line region, as expected. However, in the first 55 days of the campaign, when the obscuration was becoming most extreme, we observe a de-coupling of the UV continuum and the UV broad emission-line variability. The correlation recovered in the next 42 days of the campaign, as Mrk 817 entered a less obscured state. The short C IV and Lyα lags suggest that the accretion disk extends beyond the UV broad-line region. Unified