Today at Brown

There’s a popular video on You Tube that shows a meeting between a magnet and a superconductor. As the magnet approaches the superconductor from above and at angles, the superconductor shyly moves away. But apply enough force to the magnet and you’ll see the superconductor’s resistance weaken and eventually break down.

This spawns an odd relationship: The superconductor and the magnet both resist and attract each other, like two boxers circling each other in the ring. Ultimately, the two objects become joined, but maintain a certain space between them, a vacuum of sorts.

What Ian Tice wants to do is explain what is going on.

“It’s a very difficult mathematical problem,” says Tice, the Prager Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics.

The breakdowns in a superconductor’s resistance occur in localized areas known as vortices. Scientists have observed the creation of these vortices, which can form in a lattice-like pattern when enough magnetic force is applied. Tice’s goal is to describe how the vortices move, how they “talk” to each other.

“I’ve got these vortices forming,” he explains. “How are they moving around in time? There must be some formula as to how they behave. The dynamics can be written down in a particular way.”

The pursuit marries Tice’s love of physics and math. Tice went to the University of Kansas thinking he’d study particle physics, spurred by a visit by a KU physics professor to his high school in Topeka. But he was drawn to the “rigor” of math and graduated with a B.S. in math and a minor in physics. The 27-year-old earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at New York University last May.

In hindsight, his inclination toward math should have been obvious. When he was 12, Tice was regularly attending algebra classes his father taught at a city college in Topeka. By seventh grade, he was taking math classes at the school for credit.

“I was doing all the problems,” he says.