physics

John C. Collins

John C. Collins is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John C. Collins rather than just read about it. In short: John Clements Collins (born 1949) is a British-born American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University. He attended the University of Cambridge where he obtained a B.A. in mathematics 1971 and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1975.

Key takeaways

John C. Collins belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John C. Collins to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John C. Collins from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Clements Collins (born 1949) is a British-born American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University. He attended the University of Cambridge where he obtained a B.A. in mathematics 1971 and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1975. He worked as a postdoc and assistant professor from 1975 to 1980 at Princeton University. Collins was part of the faculty of the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1980 to 1990. From 1990 to the present, he has been a faculty member in the department of physics at Pennsylvania State University where he currently holds the position of distinguished professor. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986. In 2009, he was awarded the Sakurai Prize along with R. Keith Ellis and Davison E. Soper.

Research John Collins is known primarily for his foundational contributions to the development of perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD), especially the formulation and subsequent development of the QCD factorization theorems. Much of this work was done in collaboration with Davison E. Soper and George Sterman. Collins also contributed to the formulation of factorization proofs for exclusive processes and he provided a proof of factorization for hard high-energy diffraction. The Collins mechanism was proposed to explain the existence of transverse spin dependence in hadron collisions. Collins is the author of two books, both published by the Cambridge University Press: Renormalization: An Introduction to Renormalization, the Renormalization Group and the Operator-Product Expansion was published in 1986 and Foundations of Perturbative QCD was published in 2011.

References

External links John Collins homepage at Penn State University

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John C. Collins

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John C. Collins claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John C. Collins before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John C. Collins ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John C. Collins

In research: John C. Collins appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John C. Collins in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John C. Collins is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1949 births, 21st-century American physicists, Alumni of the University of Cambridge, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John C. Collins outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John C. Collins in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John C. Collins means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John C. Collins out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John C. Collins in simple terms?

Why does John C. Collins matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John C. Collins?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John C. Collins.