Below you’ll find the slides from my Physics Day presentations at Space Center Houston, embedded via SlideShare. I was doing the TED-style minimal text thing, so they’re probably not all that comprehensible on their own. The event was supposed to have a pop-culture connection, so I decided to use space travel and extrasolar planets as… Continue reading Space Travel, Einstein, and GPS
Author: Chad Orzel
Cover for Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist
My Thursday presentation here in Houston went well, though it was a pretty small crowd. I’ll be doing it again today before running to the airport to get home. I didn’t really have an opportunity to do shameless self-promotion regarding the new book, but I did get a copy of the official cover for it,… Continue reading Cover for Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist
Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn by Amanda Gefter
One of the pop-physics books I’ve read recently was Amanda Gefter’s much-discussed Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. I was going to post a review of it back in March, but literally the day I was planning to write it, I got email from an editor at Physics Today asking if I had any books I’d like… Continue reading Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn by Amanda Gefter
Messing With Texas
I had hoped to have another post or two scheduled for the end of this week, but The Pip got some kind of stomach bug, and threw everything into disarray. And tonight, I’m flying to Houston to give a couple of talks as part of Physics Day at Space Center Houston. Life being what it… Continue reading Messing With Texas
SteelyKid Demonstrates Relativity
Before going to the playground Saturday to investigate non-intertial frames, SteelyKid and I went over to campus to do some experiments in relativity. Galileian relativity, that is: What you see here is SteelyKid sitting on a rolling lab cart with a camera bolted to it. She throws a ball up in the air a couple… Continue reading SteelyKid Demonstrates Relativity
Non-Inertial Playground Physics
The Schenectady JCC, where SteelyKid and The Pip go to day care, has a playground with a merry-go-round on it. How this hasn’t been sued out of existence, I have no idea, but it’s a great boon to a physics professor. I’ve used it before to talk about angular momentum, but this weekend I enlisted… Continue reading Non-Inertial Playground Physics
Cosmos and the Women
Back when the first episode of the Cosmos reboot aired, somebody put together a composite of the cartoon people who flashed on screen, and we played a guessing game on Twitter. The image above is from a blog post by Meg at True Anomalies, and I think it was probably her, but the ephemeral nature… Continue reading Cosmos and the Women
Great Moments in Puzzling Axis Labels
While I’m complaining about statisticulation in social media, I was puzzled by the graph in Kevin Drum’s recent post about college wage gaps, which is reproduced as the “featured image” above, and also copied below for those reading via RSS. I don’t dispute the general phenomenon this is describing– that the top 10% of college… Continue reading Great Moments in Puzzling Axis Labels
Adjunct Faculty and Awful Stats
Via a mailing list, probably via this Tyler Cowen post, an awful statistic about adjunct faculty: 35 years ago there were 44% more tenured faculty than adjuncts. Today there are 76% more adjuncts than tenured faculty, via @chronicle — Ángel Cabrera (@CabreraAngel) April 25, 2014 This is awful in two ways. First, it’s obviously a… Continue reading Adjunct Faculty and Awful Stats
Academic Round-up: Exam Review, Student Comments, Speaker Invitations
A collection of miscellaneous stuff with an academic inclination from the past week or so: — We gave an exam last night in introductory E&M (I’m teaching one of five sections this term), so we’ve spent a lot of time this week on exam review. One thing that might be worth mentioning here is the… Continue reading Academic Round-up: Exam Review, Student Comments, Speaker Invitations