On Monday, I posted a short video and asked about the underlying physics. Here’s the clip again, showing SteelyKid and then me going down a slide made up of a whole bunch of rollers at a local playground: The notable thing about this is that SteelyKid takes a much, much longer time to get down… Continue reading Roller Slide Physics Explained
Author: Chad Orzel
Tribes, Classes, and Networking
Via Jessa Crispin on Twitter, there’s a really excellent article in the Paris Review about Harvard and Class: When I applied, I thought it would be great because I would get to meet lots of smart people. Those were the kinds of people I liked to be friends with, and I thought there would be… Continue reading Tribes, Classes, and Networking
Links for 2011-07-14
Jamie Leigh Jones verdict: Jury trials aren’t always satisfying, but they’re better than angry mobs. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine As Alan Dershowitz explained last week: “A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty. That’s because only one person is… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-14
Poll: Blogging
Last week Doug Natelson noted a drop-off in active physics blogs. This had not gone unnoticed hereabouts, though I couldn’t immediately think of what to say about that. Yesterday, though, former ScienceBlogs wrangler Christopher Mims provided a possible answer: Google+ has destroyed blogging completely. I would’ve liked to find a way to tie all this… Continue reading Poll: Blogging
Robert Charles Wilson, Vortex [Library of Babel]
Like a lot of people in SF/ Fantasy circles, I stayed up late reading last night. Unlike most of those people, though, what I was reading was not A Dance with Dragons from George R. R. Martin, but Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson, the sequel to Spin and Axis, concluding a series that he said… Continue reading Robert Charles Wilson, Vortex [Library of Babel]
Links for 2011-07-13
Counting Crows’ Recovering The Satellites | Music | We’re No. 1 | The A.V. Club “Recovering The Satellites is easily my favorite Counting Crows album, precisely because it’s the record where Duritz went from wanting to be a big star (or so he sang in “Mr. Jones”) to equating his celebrity with slow-motion drowning. This… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-13
It’s Magnetic Moment Season: Measuring Various g-Factors
Among the articles highlighted in this week’s Physics is one about a new test of QED through a measurement of the g-factor of the electron in silicon ions. This comes on the heels of a measurement of proton spin flips (this includes a free PDF) a couple of weeks ago, and those, in turn, build… Continue reading It’s Magnetic Moment Season: Measuring Various g-Factors
The Test(ing) of Time 2: Freezing Time
A month and a half ago, I reported on a simple experiment to measure the performance of a timer from the teaching labs. I started the timer running at a particualr time, and over the next couple of weeks checked in regularly with the Official US Time display at the NIST website, recording the delay… Continue reading The Test(ing) of Time 2: Freezing Time
Links for 2011-07-12
RESEARCH | MATTHEW B. THOMPSON Like many interesting scientific discoveries, this one was an accident. Sean Murphy, an undergraduate student, was working alone in the lab on a set of faces for one of his experiments. He aligned a set of faces at the eyes and started to skim through them. After a few seconds,… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-12
What Not to Say to a Pop-Science Author
(Note: This was not prompted by any particular comment. Just a slow accumulation of stuff, that turned into a blog post on this morning’s dog walk.) It’s been a couple of years now that I’ve been working on writing and promoting How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I’ve had a lot of conversations… Continue reading What Not to Say to a Pop-Science Author