Author: Chad Orzel

links for 2009-05-10

The winners of Slate’s "Define Baseball in 150 Words" contest. – By John Dickerson – Slate Magazine "Seven guys wait for these other two guys to play catch but this other guy is jealous because he wants to play and so he’s trying to stop them with a stick." should’ve won. (tags: silly sports slate)… Continue reading links for 2009-05-10

links for 2009-05-09

The Final Frontier: The Science of Star Trek: Scientific American "To get a sense of how much actual science has made its way into the science fiction universe of Star Trek, ScientificAmerican.com spoke to Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek, the first edition of which appeared on bookshelves in 1995. […] We… Continue reading links for 2009-05-09

Would You Like Some Calculus With Your Physics?

It’s a nice demonstration of the oddity of the blogosphere that a libertarian political blog has become my go-to-source for thoughtful blogging about physics education. Thoreau had two good posts yesterday at Unqualified Offerings, one on the problems created by breaking down incorrect intuition, and another on the lack of calculus in calculus-based physics texts:… Continue reading Would You Like Some Calculus With Your Physics?

Dorkiest Family Vacation Ever

Via Michael Nielsen, a page documenting what I really hope is the dorkiest family vacation ever: Project GREAT: General Relativity Einstein/Essen Anniversary Test Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier: In September 2005 (for the 50th anniversary of the atomic clock and 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity) we took several cesium clocks… Continue reading Dorkiest Family Vacation Ever

The End of Planets

We had a colloquium yesterday from Ted von Hippel of Siena College, over on Route 9, about “White Dwarf Debris Disks and the Fate of Planetary Systems.” The abstract was: After a brief introduction to white dwarfs and debris disks, I will present observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes of metal-polluted white… Continue reading The End of Planets

Are You Feeling Festive?

I get sent a lot of publicity material by people hoping I’ll mention it on the blog, but because I’m a terrible person, very little of it actually gets used. One thing that shouldn’t be allowed to slip through the cracks, though, is the announcement of the program for the 2009 World Science Festival, June… Continue reading Are You Feeling Festive?

links for 2009-05-08

Evolution and the Second Law | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine "Without even addressing the question of how “life” should be defined, we can ask what sounds like a subsequent question: does life make thermodynamic sense? The answer, before you get too excited, is “yes.” But the opposite has been claimed – not by any… Continue reading links for 2009-05-08

Fairy-Tale Physics 2: Spinning Gold

You might think that Monday’s discourse on thermodynamics in the Goldilocks story was the only children’s story in which physics plays a role, but that’s not true. Physics is everywhere in fairy tales. Take, for example, the story of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a mysterious little man demands a terrible price for helping a miller’s daughter… Continue reading Fairy-Tale Physics 2: Spinning Gold