links for 2008-07-02

3 comments

  1. I’ll add this link to your list.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7484975.stm

    It is a BBC story about the possible role of more even growth patterns (hence more uniform density, not greater density as you might guess from the headline) as a possible explanation for the superior quality of the wood used in Stradivarius violins. I’ve heard this “little ice age” climate explanation somewhere before (probably a colloquium on the acoustics of a violin), but this quantifies the differences between old and new instruments.

    Elsewhere, I was shocked to learn today that A-levels are harder to achieve in physics than media studies in the UK, just as I was stunned to learn Monday that math ed is weak at most US universities. Must blog about that last one one of these days.

  2. “A press release that is remarkable for its lack of scientific detail.”

    I’ve been looking at that paper for a few days and am hoping to blog about it soon…

  3. When I looked at the press release about Rydberg states, I thought the only thing really new was that it was big enough that they could take pictures. (In the sense of the original goal of PRL, however, this does not disqualify it from that journal.) I remember an article about making a classical “orbit” quite some time ago.

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