EurekAlert provides the latest dispatch from the class war, the the form of a release headlined ” Family wealth may explain differences in test scores in school-age children“: The researchers found a marked disparity in family wealth between Black and White families with young children, with White families owning more than 10 times as many… Continue reading You’ve Got to Have Money to Learn Math
Author: Chad Orzel
Lab Porn: Plasma!
A couple more pretty pictures of the apparatus, to pass the time: This is the plasma discharge source that we use to make metastable atoms. We excite the gas using a RF coil (under the tinfoil) with a couple of watts of power at 145 MHz (local ham radio people must love me…), which creates… Continue reading Lab Porn: Plasma!
Lab Porn: Doomsday!
Behold, the end of the world is at hand! They said I was mad– mad!– but now they’ll pay… Well, ok, it’s not actually a doomsday weapon. It’s a shot of the main experiment chamber in my lab, taken in very low light in an attempt to capture the orange glow of the ion gauge… Continue reading Lab Porn: Doomsday!
Happy Easter
Today is Easter Sunday, which I will be celebrating in the traditional manner: by, um, driving across half of New York and Pennsylvania… OK, maybe that’s not the usual tradition… I’m giving a talk tomorrow at Bucknell, so I need to get to Lewisburg, PA tonight. This will allow me to stop through Scenic Whitney… Continue reading Happy Easter
Young and Photogenic
Ladies and gentemen, one of the three worst pictures ever taken of me: There is, of course, a story behind this. It’s not a particularly good story, but there is one…
links for 2008-03-23
Relativity: Measuring the speed of light « Skulls in the Stars A history of experiments through the ages. (tags: precision-measurement experiment history science) Nanocrystals could help recover waste heat – physicsworld.com “[T]he thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) for the ingots increased to 1.2 at room temperature (from a value of 1.0 previously). Moreover, they found… Continue reading links for 2008-03-23
Tampa Madness!
I got a late start this morning, and had to run some errands today, but I would be remiss if I didn’t post something to commemorate the wackiness in the Tampa subregional of the NCAA Tournament. They played four games yesterday in Tampa: the first two went into overtime, with Western Kentucky beating Drake on… Continue reading Tampa Madness!
links for 2008-03-22
Security Beat The DHS gets security advice from Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and David Brin. I feel safer already. (tags: stupid SF war US politics) States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School – New York Times “Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left… Continue reading links for 2008-03-22
Small Colleges Represent!
Congratulations to Davidson, who just knocked off Gonzaga. It’s a 7-10 game, so not that big an upset, but there aren’t a lot of liberal arts schools winning NCAA games, so let’s hear it for the Wildcats.
God and Fraternities
There was a faculty-student happy hour event last week for St. Patrick’s Day, and I spent a bunch of time drinking Irish beer, listening to Irish music (one of the English department faculty is an accomplished piper, and brought a bunch of other local musicians in to play for the party), and talking to some… Continue reading God and Fraternities