A press release from Harvard caught my eye last week, announcing results from Markus Greiner’s group that were, according to the release, published in Science. The press release seems to have gotten the date wrong, though– the article didn’t appear in Science last week. It is, however, available on the arxiv, so you get the… Continue reading Watching Individual Atoms Make a Phase Transition
Author: Chad Orzel
Two Cultures Publishing Journals
I hate to keep highlighting silly articles in Inside Higher Ed, but they keep publishing silly articles, like Jeffrey DiLeo’s argument that humanities journals cannot be ranked because they’re all unique and precious flowers too specialized: Another reason for the roaring silence regarding the ranking of humanities journals regards the high level of sub-disciplinary specialization.… Continue reading Two Cultures Publishing Journals
Links for 2010-06-22
slacktivist: Big shoes “But what I think people meant about [Manute] Bol’s “killer instinct” was that he never seemed to take the game of basketball quite seriously enough. He hadn’t chosen this game, it had chosen him. It discovered him in that Sudanese village and plucked him out of it, whisking him halfway around the… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-22
Last Chance for World Cup Success
Three European countries, France, Germany, and Spain have suffered embarrassing World Cup losses. The French team in particular has appeared to be in complete disarray. Their combined record to this point is just 2-3-1 (W-L-T). What do these three countries have in common? None of them have purchased translation rights for How to Teach Physics… Continue reading Last Chance for World Cup Success
Dropping Bose Condensates for Fun and Science
An experiment in Germany has generated a good deal of publicity by dropping their Bose-Einstein Cendensate (BEC) apparatus from a 146 meter tower. This wasn’t an act of frustration by an enraged graduate student (anybody who has worked with BEC has probably fantasized about throwing at least part of their apparatus down a deep hole),… Continue reading Dropping Bose Condensates for Fun and Science
The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
The Virtuosi has quickly become a staple of the daily Links Dumps here, but the recent series of posts on experimental physics deserve greater prominence, so here they are: Life as an Experimenter- Day One Life as an Experimenter- Day Two Life as an Experimenter- Day Three Life as an Experimenter- Reflections The individual day… Continue reading The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
Links for 2010-06-21
Lost Myths ” Lostmyths.net is a website featuring myths uncovered by writer Claude Lalumière (Tesseracts 12, Witpunk, Objects of Worship) and illustrator Rupert Bottenberg. As cryptomythologists, they study imaginary myths, just like cryptozoologists study imaginary creatures. […] The site features gods and deities from pantheons unsuspected until now and stories about some heretofore unknown players… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-21
Chateau SteelyKid
I’ve made a few oblique references to home improvement projects over the last week or so. These weren’t for our house, but for SteelyKid’s– Kate’s mom got her a playhouse for Christmas, which we finally got around to installing in the back yard. SteelyKid has taken right to home ownership: Don’t let her studied cool… Continue reading Chateau SteelyKid
Science Is More Like Sumo Than Soccer
There’s a blog post making the rounds of the science blogosphere titled If Sports Got Reported Like Science, which imagines the effect of applying the perceived restriction on scientific terminology to sports reporting: HOST: In sports news, Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti today heavily criticised a controversial offside decision which denied Didier Drogba a late equaliser,… Continue reading Science Is More Like Sumo Than Soccer
World Cup Weekend
Friday’s games showcased everything that makes international soccer maddening for Americans to watch: dreadful officiating, lack of scoring, and annoyingly conservative strategy. The referee in the Germany-Serbia game handed out cards like it was a poker tournament, with the result that, in the second half, every time two players got within about a meter of… Continue reading World Cup Weekend