Several weeks ago, I announced a contest to determine the Most Amazing Laser Application. Personal issues interrupted this, but I want to finish it out in honor of LaserFest Here’s the list of finalists, with links to those already written up: Cat toy/ dog toy/ laser light show Laser cooling/ BEC Lunar laser ranging Optical… Continue reading Return of the Laser Smackdown
Month: April 2010
Busy Weekend at Chateau Steelypips
No blogging this weekend, and not even a Links Dump for Monday morning, because I was busy with non-blog stuff all weekend. Such as fencing in Lake Steelypips: OK, maybe that’s too grandiose a name for the little decorative pond in our back yard. It’s not all that large, but it is big enough to… Continue reading Busy Weekend at Chateau Steelypips
Links for 2010-04-11
Mightygodking.com » Post Topic » The Accidental Trilogy: Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man “The problem is, Lucas made [Star Wars] so immersive that nobody noticed the allegory, and the effects so beautiful that everyone judged all subsequent films by the standards he set. From now on, an important aspect of all science-fiction… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-11
Links for 2010-04-10
Neil Fraser: Hardware: Lava Lamp Centrifuge “Would a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Would the wax still rise to the surface? Would the blobs be smaller and faster? With broad disagreement on the answers, I built a large centrifuge to find out.” (tags: physics gravity experiment science video planets astronomy… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-10
There’s More to Science Than Evolution
The National Science Board made a deeply regrettable decision to omit questions on evolution and the Big Bang from the Science and Engineering Indicators report for 2010. As you might expect, this has stirred up some controversy. I wasn’t surprised to learn this, as I had already noticed the omission a couple of months ago,… Continue reading There’s More to Science Than Evolution
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Festive Update
There’s no rest for the wicked, as last weekend’s hectic running around is followed by another busy weekend, with some on-campus stuff on Sunday as part of our annual Accepted Students Days. More importantly, though, I will be on a panel at the Empire State book Festival on Saturday from 12:45-1:30 pm: BLOOK: Going from… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Festive Update
Links for 2010-04-09
Physics Buzz: 490 billion nanometers tall “There are seven SI base units: meter (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol), and candela (cd). The other SI units are derived from these seven: acceleration is m/s^2, density is kg/m^3, magnetic field strength is A/m, etc. According to the International Bureau of Weights… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-09
Thursday Baby Blogging 040810
“What’s SteelyKid doing for amusement now that the weather is all nice and stuff?,” you ask. Well, here’s your answer: she’s giving her sky-bison rides on the swing in the back yard: “Wait a minute,” you say, “isn’t it, like, 80 degrees there? Why’s she wearing a coat?” Look, man, when the Empress decides she… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 040810
So You’d Like to Learn Some Physics…
Via Twitter, Michael Barton is looking for some good books about physics. I was Twitter-less for a few days around the period of his request, and this is a more-than-140-characters topic if ever there was one, so I’m turning it into a blog post. The reason for the request is that he’s going to be… Continue reading So You’d Like to Learn Some Physics…
Long Author Lists and Books Not Written
Back when I was in grad school, and paper copies of journals were delivered to the lab by a happy mailman riding a brontosaurus, I used to play a little game when the new copy of Physical Review Letters arrived: I would flip through the papers in the high energy and nuclear physics sections, and… Continue reading Long Author Lists and Books Not Written