Links for 2011-04-05

I’m offended.

“It is oddly fitting that the birth of electromagnetism, and an entirely new direction in physics, started with the tiniest twitch of a compass needle.  In the year 1820, Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) observed the twitch of said compass needle in the presence of an electric current, providing the first definite evidence of a link between electricity and magnetism that would set the tone for much of modern physics.

The story of Oersted’s experiment is the stuff of physics legend, but like most legends it is often misremembered and exaggerated.  Nevertheless, it is a fascinating piece of work and a piece of scientific history worth recounting.”

“Academic culture is unique in many ways. One of its distinctive calling cards is a temperamental allergy to people with positional power actually using it. In most other lines of work, a taboo like that would be considered either bizarre or simply unthinkable; in academe, it’s a norm. It’s so normal that in a debate among highly educated people about sometimes-criminal conduct, the one shared assumption is that you don’t want administrators to get involved. In any other line of work, you’d want to bust the perps, and you’d call in the folks empowered to do that.

The taboo seems to be based on fear of abuse. But the idea that incapacitating those with positional power will somehow create a power-free zone is delusional. Instead, it empowers local bullies. When legitimate authority has been rendered irrelevant, then by default, the only option left against petty tyrants is some sort of frontier justice, whether overt or covert. “

“The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has given rise to considerable hand-wringing among US educators and policy makers due to US students’ poor performance. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February in Washington, DC, physicist Chad Orzel said that TIMSS physics questions were generally aligned with standard US high school physics curricula, but he also suggested ways to improve the next round of the test.”