I was starting to type up the next Laser Smackdown entry, when it occurred to me that this was a good point to talk about a neat little thing from optics. It further occurred to me that this would be a good poll/quiz topic, to see what people think before I give you the real… Continue reading Optics Quiz: What Do You Get With Half a Lens?
Month: April 2010
What’s Eating Our House?
A neighbor pointed out to me yesterday that there’s a big hole in our clapboard siding that was made by some sort of bird. This morning, I got a picture of the culprit: I’m not quite certain why the animal kingdom has decided to trash my stuff this year– insane jealousy of Emmy?– but I… Continue reading What’s Eating Our House?
Links for 2010-04-15
The Virtuosi: Would a laser gun recoil? “Let’s motivate our question a little bit. I’ve wondered about this question since I saw star wars. Though I’m no firearms expert, the recoil in guns must come from conservation of momentum principles. Momentum is conserved in a system. The gun starts with zero momentum. We fire, give… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-15
Amazing Laser Application 7: Telecommunications!
What’s the application? Telecommunications, namely, the sending of messages over very long distances by encoding them in light pulses which are sent over optical fibers. What problem(s) is it the solution to? “How can we send large numbers of messages from one place to another more efficiently than with electrical pulses sent down copper wires?”… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 7: Telecommunications!
Dorky Poll: TV Technology
I won’t attempt to explain the chain of reasoning that led to this topic this morning. The poll itself doesn’t need much explanation, though: As any geek knows, the tv show(s) CSI: Descriptive Subtitle rely heavily on fake technologies. which of these would you most like to be real? Which imaginary technology from CSI would… Continue reading Dorky Poll: TV Technology
Links for 2010-04-14
slacktivist: L’affaire Waltke “This is a story about control. It is about, in the unintentionally candid terms of one of the main actors, “absolute authority” and the desire to wield that authority over a text so that the text, in turn, may be used to wield absolute authority over others. It is a story, in… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-14
Poll: What Do Students Need to Learn About Technical Writing?
I am currently on a committee looking to set some standards for technical writing in the introductory engineering sequence (which means the first two terms of physics, as they constitute 50-67% of the classes common to all first-year engineers). One of our jobs is to come up with a list of skills that we want… Continue reading Poll: What Do Students Need to Learn About Technical Writing?
Measuring the Angular Momentum of Light
I’m teaching a junior/senior level elective this term on quantum mechanics. We’re using Townsend’s A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics, which starts with spin-1/2 and develops the whole theory in terms of state vectors and matrices. This is kind of an uneasy fit for me, as I’m very much a swashbuckling experimentalist, and not as… Continue reading Measuring the Angular Momentum of Light
Links for 2010-04-13
Michelson and the President (1869) « Skulls in the Stars “I’m currently working my way through the book The Master of Light: a Biography of Albert A. Michelson (1973), written by one of his daughters, Dorothy Michelson Livingston. I typically find the beginnings of biographies to be rather slow-moving, with some sort of statement like,… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-13
Amazing Laser Application 6: LIGO!
What’s the application? LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Graviitational Wave Observatory, because (astro)physicists feel free to drop inconvenient words when making up cute acronyms. This is an experiment to look for disturbances in space-time caused by massive objects, which would manifest as a slight stretching and compression of space itself. What problem(s) is it the… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 6: LIGO!