At his lecture Thursday night, Nobel laureate Eric Cornell combined his award-winning concepts with humor to keep the audience of students, faculty and the public alert and interested.

It worked, and attendees were glad Cornell, who won the Nobel prize for Physics in 2001, was able to make physics accessible to everyone.

"I loved it. He's so funny and it was informative and entertaining," said Jennifer Bustamante, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. "He certainly makes it sound interesting."

The lecture focused on Cornell's success with Bose-Einstein Condensation, a theory developed in the 1920s that examines the behavior of identical atoms, and the fact that now there are many labs that have an apparatus like the original to cool other molecules.

Having a little background in physics was all some people may have needed to understand the presentation. Cornell's presentation was casual, consisting of slides featuring his doodles, pictures and handwriting.

Cornell aided his audience by explaining difficult concepts with words and phrases like "one wiggle and one jiggle" and with drawings of atoms that looked like blobs.

"I like the idea (that) if I can make it a little lively I can keep people intact," he said.

Cornell also took into account all the knowledge levels present and helped those in need of further explanation without losing the interest of the more knowledgeable audience members.

"He was really good, and he could bring the level down to the level of undergraduates," said Dan Mostyn, a sophomore in the College of Engineering.

Cornell said he and his team used the element rubidium in gas form in their lab, cooling it very slowly to keep it from turning into a solid.

Cornell also explained the process in simpler terms, using a cup of coffee as an example.

"I'm a physics major and we've spent a lot of time studying Bose-Einstein Condensation, and it was interesting to see the guy who did it," said Matt Kelley, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Cornell and his team used lasers to cool the rubidium, and used a magnetic field to keep it from touching surfaces within the vacuum allowing it to reach a temperature of one millionth Kelvin.

Zero Kelvin is also known as "absolute zero" and is physically impossible to reach, Cornell said.

The presentation "made me proud to be studying science," Mostyn said. "It's a field that's booming."

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on October 18, 2005.