Last summer, there was a fair bit of hype about a paper from Mark Raizen’s group at Texas which was mostly reported with an “Einstein proven wrong” slant, probably due to this press release. While it is technically true that they measured something Einstein said would be impossible to measure, that framing is a little… Continue reading Proving Einstein Wrong…ish: Measurement of the Instantaneous Velocity of a Brownian Particle
Month: May 2011
Big Brother Is Evaluating Your Teaching
The New York Times ran a couple of op-eds on Sunday about education policy. One, by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari is familair stuff to anyone who’s heard me talk about the subject before: teachers in the US are, on the whole, given fewer resources than they need to succeed, paid less well than… Continue reading Big Brother Is Evaluating Your Teaching
Links for 2011-05-02
The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries – NYTimes.com “WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-02
Links for 2011-05-01
Acculturating students to science § Unqualified Offerings “A student with a very enthusiastic yet serious demeanor, and very responsible habits, recently asked if he could work in my research group. He has few relevant skills at this point, and my crew is pretty full, but I want to help him, so we’re applying for some… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-01