I haven’t been as relentless about flogging How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (now available in paperback!) as I was last year, because it gets kind of exhausting. I do have a vanity search set up on Google Reader that points me to the occasional review– this one, for example, so I still see the occasional positive comment, which is good for a boost in a difficult week at work.
Of course, the vanity search is world wide, which means it also picks up mentions of the international editions, such as this Italian blog (oddly, it gets my employer wrong– I should check the Italian edition and see if that’s the blogger or a typo in the about-the-author note), which uses a comment from my book as the jumping-off point to talk about physics in general. Google Translate doesn’t really do it justice, I suspect, but it’s a kick to be stimulating conversations in languages I don’t speak.
The real find of recent-ish vanity searching, though, is that there’s a science blogger in Italy, Marco Delmastro, who has completely independently arrived at the idea of explaining physics to his dog, Oliver, with a whole series of such posts. As far as I know, it’s nothing to do with my book– the mention that the vanity search turned up was a comment pointing the book out to the blogger– which is in many ways more amusing. I guess talking dogs are big in Italy, or something.
Anyway, if you like talking to dogs about physics, and speak Italian, let me take this opportunity to plug La fisica spiegata al mio cane. I can’t vouch for the translation, but I’m fond of the original text…
Ehi, greetings from Switzerland! Nice to see you stuble upon my blog. I happen to be Italian – and to share my life with an Italian dog – but I work at CERN and live nearby.
Oliver got interested in physics more or less when I move here: he was so tired of all my friends not understanding what I was doing for a living, and suggested that if I could explain it to him, it would be good for everyone. And it actually seems to work!
Oliver is just incredibly more lazy then Emmy (or am I?), and I guess we’ll never get a book deal at this rate. Well, being an Italian-speaking dog is a limitation as well… 🙂
Out of curiosity, I followed the link to the Lidi Matematici blog, which identifies you thus: “Chad Orzel, professore associato di Fisica all’università Mendeley, di New York.” My research assistant Mr. Google informs me that Mendeley is an academic reference management software package. A most curious mistake.
Incidentally, a search on “mendeley college” gives a profile of you on the first page of hits, with your affiliation correctly listed.
“How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” was a fantastic read! Unfortunately, I am not as smart at Emmy so I have a question about virtual particles.
Is it possible for a virtual particle consisting of a proton/antiproton pair to “pop” into existence close enough to the nucleus of a helium atom (two protons and two neutrons) such that the antiproton of the virtual particle annihilates one of the protons of the helium atom leaving Tritium and a virtual proton? If so, would it be possible for the virtual proton to escape capture by the tritium nucleus like the Hawkings Radiation you mention escapes a black hole? Or would the virtual proton always replace the annihilated proton in the helium nulceus changing the brief tritium atom back to helium?
Along this same line, if an electron/antielectron virtual particle “popped” near the nucleus of a radioactive isotope could the antielection help trigger a beta decay?
Thanks again for writing such an amazing book! I had to read several chapters twice so an answer Emmy could understand would help a lot.
Blair Nelson
“How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” was a fantastic read! Unfortunately, I am not as smart at Emmy so I have a question about virtual particles.
Is it possible for a virtual particle consisting of a proton/antiproton pair to “pop” into existence close enough to the nucleus of a helium atom (two protons and two neutrons) such that the antiproton of the virtual particle annihilates one of the protons of the helium atom leaving Tritium and a virtual proton? If so, would it be possible for the virtual proton to escape capture by the tritium nucleus like the Hawkings Radiation you mention escapes a black hole? Or would the virtual proton always replace the annihilated proton in the helium nulceus changing the brief tritium atom back to helium?
Along this same line, if an electron/antielectron virtual particle “popped” in near the nucleus of a radioactive isotope, could the antielection help trigger a beta decay?
Thanks again for writing such an amazing book! I had to read several chapters twice so an answer Emmy could understand would help a lot.
Blair Nelson
Hi Prof. Orzel,
the reason for the mistake with Mendeley, is that I had in my head that sw package name for a job I was performing ( I work in IBM in a research department in the field of semantics and computational linguistics) and … simply did not recognize the typo any more. Sorry for that.
Thanks for the book, it was inspiring. In Italy we are living real dark times wrt to culture and having a science blog up & running is not easy as well.
I started following Prof. Susskind video right after reading his Cosmic Landscape book and yours, a tremendous momentum of inspiration for my blog !
Carlo