To make up for last month’s long delay in posting, I’ll knock out this month’s recap of Forbes blog posts really quickly. Also, I still have Vacation Brain, so writing anything really new isn’t in the cards…
— What Should Non-Scientists Learn From Physics?: You probably won’t be surprised to hear that, in my opinion, it’s not a specific set of facts, but an attitude toward the world.
— Softball Physics: How Far Can You Run While The Ball Is In The Air?: In which SteelyKid learning softball’s “tag up” rule the hard way leads to an interesting problem in physics.
— How Long Would A Fidget Spinner Spin In Space?: If we’re going to have a bunch of the things in the house, I might as well get a blog post out of it…
— How Laser Cooling Continues To Open Up New Possibilities For Physics: A delayed reaction to some talks at DAMOP about new research areas that are rooted in the development of laser cooling back in the 1980’s. Written while in Mexico on vacation.
— The Physics Of Vacation: It’s All About Phase Transitions: Another post written in Mexico while on vacation, this one about being on vacation, specifically the way phase transitions of water have a huge impact on the experience.
Predictably enough, the post capitalizing on a recent fad is the runaway winner, traffic-wise. I was disappointed that the softball one didn’t get more traction, because I thought it was cute. Probably should’ve put “Baseball” in the title rather than “Softball,” since I mention both, and some baseball fans are louts. The two written on vacation went basically nowhere, traffic-wise; this is probably partly because I was on vacation and not able to actively social-media bomb them, partly a summer melt thing (traffic always dips in the summer) and partly a matter of topic selection. But those are the things I felt like writing about, and that’s the whole point, here…