A Cliff Note’s Guide to String Theory

Topic: String theory

Organization: Spatial

Specific Purpose: At the end of my presentation, the audience will have a very basic understanding of
string theory.

INTRODUCTION

I. Attention Getter: Since the dawn of humanity, man has searched for a meaning to its existence.
Many questions such as “Where did we come from?” and “How did we get here?” have arisen
but remained mysteries for millenniums. But in the early 20th century, an answer to all these
philosophical questions was born in the form of a theory known as String theory.

II. Relevance: String theory could be the answer to all the existential questions about our
existence. It could explain how we began, and how we’ll end.

III. Credibility: You may be thinking to yourself: “Why is a music major trying to explain a property
of theoretical physics?” but I have already had to research this topic before. Back in 8th grade, I
had to give an informative speech like this one and explain what boils down to theoretical
physics to a group of 13-14 year olds, therefore I had to be thorough and clear with my research
and explanation.

IV. Thesis: For the next 5 minutes, I will attempt to explain the inner workings of string theory, the
11 dimensions of our universe, and the scientific backing and implications string theory holds.

BODY

I. The forthright, most bare bones principle of string theory is its descriptions of our universe.

A. Let’s say you see this notecard but you want to see what it’s made of. Well if
you shrink down to the nanoscopic level, you’ll find atoms. As I’m sure we all
learned in chemistry, atoms are made of particles like electrons, neutrons, and
protons, but what you didn’t learn about though are quarks. If we take a look
inside these particles, there exist even smaller particles called quarks that
science refers to as the fundamental particles of the universe. Here though is
where conventional science ends and string theory begins.

B. As explained by renowned physicist Brian Green on his February 2005 Ted Talk
entitled “String Theory”, inside all these quarks are thin filaments of energy
called superstrings. Like strings on a guitar, they vibrate at different frequencies.
Unlike a guitar though, they don’t create pitches, but particles. All the particles
that influence the world around us in ways we can’t even begin to comprehend .
Transition: In order for these predictions to be correct though, we need many more dimensions to exist
than just the four we can observe.

II. When I say dimensions, I mean like the dimensions of space such as the third dimension that
you’re all sitting in right now.

A. Talk of multiple dimensions all began with a German mathematician and

physicist named Theodor Kaluza. All the way back in the early 20th century,
names such as Einstein and Klein were being celebrated for their immense
scientific discoveries. Kaluza wanted to get in on this by developing a theory of
everything that could explain every known property of the universe. Now at the
time, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had described empty space as being a plane
of warps and curves. And when literally everything is a series of warps and
curves what else is there left to describe the other forces of nature with? That
got Kaluza thinking and he was able to come up with a single solution: there
must be more dimensions of space that we can’t consciously observe. That is
the where the real meat of string theory begins.

B. Kaluza believed all the dimensions we couldn’t see were actually located
microscopically in the fabric of space itself, all curled up into their own ring. Ioan
Muntean in his 2009 doctoral dissertation, “Unification and Explanation in Early
Kaluza-Klein Theories” expanded further on this idea by citing reason these
dimensions being so small is due to how they affect reality and the forces of
nature via their interaction with superstrings. For, through a series of advanced
mathematics I could spend 20 minutes trying to explain, string theory requires a
total of 11 dimensions to be able to encompass all forces of nature we know of
to this point. Still with me?

Transition: This is all fine and good but how do we know that any of these scientific semantics are even
theoretically possible? Enter the Large Hadron Collider.

III. Ever since it was built in 2008, particle physicists have been hoping to get their hands on the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to use it to prove the existence of string theory.

A. The LHC is a 27km long set of tubes under the Switzerland-France border that
scientists have been using to shoot particles around. Manufactured in the LHC
itself are a type of quark called bottom quarks which are shot around at speeds
we can't even begin to comprehend and slung head on to each other. The hope
is that these head on collisions will release debris. If in that debris energy spikes
are detected, that would be proof that string theory is a plausible theory.

B. Unfortunately, scientists haven't had any luck in the past 10 years with the LHC.
No energy has been emitted when these particles have collided. That's not
 stopping physicists though. They're planning on continuing to experiment with
the variables further until they wholeheartedly believe nothing more can be
done.

CONCLUSION
I. Thesis Summary: At last, we're at the end of this journey where you learned about the basics of
string theory, the hidden dimensions, and how science is trying to put this theory to rest.

II. Memorable Closing: With that being said, if you're interested in learning more about string
theory, I highly encourage you to go to sites like Ted Ed or World Science Festival. They've both
got some great in depth videos on string theory that do it more justice than 5 minutes ever can.
Thank you for your time and I hope you learned something new and interesting today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Muntean, I. L. (2009). Unification and explanation in early Kaluza-Klein theories (Doctoral dissertation,
UC San Diego).

Green, Brian, (2005, February). String Theory. Retrieved from https://ed.ted.com/lessons/brian-green-

on-string-theory.
Intro- Since the dawn of humanity, we’ve searched for some innate reason for our existence. Many
philosophical questions such as “why are we here” and “where did we come from” have arisen only to
be shot down with the notion that they’re unanswerable. But this all change 100 years ago when a
theory of everything was proposed entitled string theory. String theory tries to explain all the forces of
nature and properties of our universe that scientists have observed but don’t yet fully understand the
inner workings of. If you know anything about string theory, you might be thinking to yourself “why is a
music major trying to explain a property of theoretical physics to me?”… Fair point. But I’ve actually
done this speech before. Way back in 8th grade, I was in a leadership course which required me to give
multiple speeches and presentations, one of them being an informative speech. And being the edgy 14
year old I was, I wanted to make this as hard as I could for myself, and then I found string theory. Now it
being that I was trying to explain this to a group of 13 and 14 year olds, I had to be e xtremely detail
oriented so I could answer any questions that arose. Over the next 5 minutes, I’ll be teaching you guys
about the essentials of string theory. We’ll transition to the 11 theoretical spacial dimensions. And then
we’ll end off with how scientist are trying to use modern technology to prove, or disprove string theory.
Let’s start off with the basics.

Body 1- The forthright, most bare bones principle of string theory is its description of our universe. To
understand that though, we must go down to the quantum realm. So let’s say you want to see what this
notecard is made of. If we shrink down to the nanoscopic level, we’ll see atoms and the particles that
make them up. Inside these particles are something called quarks. Now quarks are what scientists refer
to as the fundamental particle of our universe, they make up everything. Now conventional science says
there’s nothing inside these quarks, but string theory says otherwise. As explained by renowned
physicist Brian Green on his February 2005 Ted Talk entitled “String Theory”, inside all these quarks are
thin filaments of energy called superstrings. Like strings on a guitar, they vibrate at different
frequencies. But instead of creating pitches, superstrings create particles themselves. These are the
particles supposedly responsible for every known property of our universe. Now this is some great
theoretical physics, but in order for these predictions to be correct, we need a number of extra
dimensions to operate in.

Body 2 – When I say dimensions, I mean them in the sense of space. Like the third dimension which
you’re sitting in right now. Before we get into why we need these dimensions we must understand the
when. Let’s take a step back into the teenage years of the 20th century. Names such as Einstein and Klein
were being celebrated for their vast leaps in scientific discovery. German mathematician and physicist
Theodor Kaluza wanted to get in on this fame by one upping Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by explaining
all know properties of our universe. Einstein’s theory explained all space as a series of warps and curves
mainly describing gravity’s effect on space as the warping of space-time. And when literally everything is
a warp or a curve, what all is left to explain the other properties? That got Kaluza thinking and he got an
idea: there must be more dimensions of space that we can’t consciously observe. That is the where the
real meat of string theory begins. Kaluza believed that all these hidden dimensions were actually hidden
nanoscopically in the fabric of space itself, all curled up into their own ring. Ioan Muntean in his 2009
doctoral dissertation, “Unification and Explanation in Early Kaluza-Klein Theories” expanded further on
this idea by citing the reason these dimensions have to be curled up so small is so they can interact with
the superstrings. Down the road, some more scientists came along and did some very complicated math
to determine that string theory could only work with 11 dimensions. This is all fine and good but how do
we know that any of these scientific semantics are even theoretically possible? Enter the Large Hadron
Collider.

Body 3 – Ever since 2008, physicists have been itching to get their hands on the Large Hadron Collider,
LHC for short, in hopes they could use it to finally put string theory’s mystery to rest. For those of you
uninitiated, the LHC is a 27 km long set of tubes under the Swiss-French border, where scientists shoot
artificially made quarks at each other at immensely high speeds. Off these quarks’ head-on collision
come debris. For string theory, this debris is highly important. If any energy spikes are detected from the
debris, that lends a hand to string theory’s plausibility, for these energy spikes mean that there’re
superstrings inside the quarks. Unfortunately though, scientists have been unsuccessful in detecting any
evidence of superstrings for the past 10 years. That’s not stopping some physicists though. They plan to
continue tweaking variables until they get a conclusive answer.

Conclusion - At last, we're at the end of this journey where you learned about the basics of string theory,
the hidden dimensions, and how science is trying to put this theory to rest. With that being said, if
you're interested in learning more about string theory, I highly encourage you to go to sites like Ted Ed
or World Science Festival. They've both got some great in depth videos on string theory that do it more
justice than 5 minutes ever can. Thank you for your time and I hope you learned someth ing new and
interesting today.