Online Python Tutor Gives a nice visual representation of what’s going on in a Python code snippet. If only it handled VPython… Chip MacGregor .com: Does the publisher lose money if my book doesn’t earn out? Remember, every business can lose money. Retail shops, service business, even publishers. I mean, if you own a shoe […]
Month: February 2012
Reflecting the Times?
I’m at Boskone this weekend, and this morning went to a fairly frustrating panel on “SF/F/H As a Mirror on Society,” described thusly: It’s simplistic to say genre fiction maps to current politics. Vampires are bankers, zombies are the revengeful victimized classes, and werewolves are the media in feeding frenzy? C’mon. But did we write […]
Links for 2012-02-17
Xpress Reviews: Nonfiction | First Look at New Books, February 17, 2012 — Library Journal Reviews Playing Gracie Allen to Orzel’s George Burns is the endearing Emmy, the canine star of his previous book. No matter whether Emmy thinks she will be younger by pulling fast on her leash or that she will suddenly fit […]
Bonsoir, Baboon
One of SteelyKid’s favorite bedtimes reads is Good Night, Gorilla, which is very short and mostly pictures. We’ve read it about a million times, so to mix things up (and further my goal of convincing her that I’m a blithering idiot), I’ll give it different titles when I hold it up before reading it. She […]
Most Difficult Course?
Regular reader Johan Larson sends in a good question about academic physics: You have written about teaching various courses in modern physics, a subject that has a fearsome reputation among students for skull-busting difficulty. That suggests a broader question: what is the most difficult course at your university? Or even more broadly, how would one […]
Links for 2012-02-16
Problem solving like a physicist | Science Edventures Another way, which looks the same on the surface, is to break the nasty problem into a sequence of steps. “First, find the relationship between A and B. Then, calculate B for the given value of A. Next, substitute A and B into C and solve for […]
Links for 2012-02-15
Proton Collisions Vs. Quark/Gluon/Antiquark Mini-Collisions | Of Particular Significance Keep in mind that the total number of 7 TeV = 7000 GeV proton-proton collisions that took place in ATLAS while they were accumulating the data for the plot above was about 100,000,000,000,000. [The total 2011 data set was 5 times larger, but the corresponding plot […]
An Experiment in Teaching Writing: A Look Inside the Sausage Factory
As I’ve said a bazillion times already this term, I’m teaching a class that is about research and writing, with a big final paper due at the end of the term. Because iterative feedback is key to learning to write, they also have to turn in a complete rough draft, which I will mark up […]
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest Results
So, the big How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Photoshop contest concluded on Friday. We got five really good entries, and the judges (me and Kate) had a hard time reaching a decision. After long deliberation, though, we’ve come up with a solution. But first, the entries:
Upcoming Appearances: Boskone
I’ve been falling down a little in the area of shameless self-promotion, but I will be at Boskone this coming weekend, where I’ll be doing three program items: Reading: Chad Orzel (Reading), Fri 19:30 – 20:00 This will be a section from the forthcoming book, probably involving Emmy and particle physics. Or possibly William Butler […]