The very last section of the book-in-progress (at least the draft that’s with my editor right now…) is titled “Science Is Never Over,” and talks about how there are a nearly infinite number of phenomena that you can investigate scientifically. The universe is a never-ending source of amazement and wonder, with surprisingly rich dynamics in… Continue reading Repeat After Me: Particle Physics Is Not All of Physics
Author: Chad Orzel
The Tricky Thing About Simulated Dynamics
In the previous post about simulating the attraction between sticky tapes using VPython, I ended with a teaser mentioning that there was a discrepancy between the simulation and the theoretical solution from directly solving the equations. The problem is kind of subtle, but clearly visible in this graph from that post: In this, we see… Continue reading The Tricky Thing About Simulated Dynamics
Physics Hangout in Need of Better Title
What with the umpteen zillion articles declaring the Death of the Blog, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing something podcast-ish for a while. Rhett Allain from Dot Physics was game, too, and suggested using Google+ to do a video hangout, so here we are talking about our classes this term: The video quality… Continue reading Physics Hangout in Need of Better Title
Simulated Tape and Universal Behavior
Having spent a lot of time solving equations related to sticky tape models, including trying to work solutions in my head while driving to Grandma and Grandpa’s with the kids, and making some measurements of real tapes, there was only one thing left to do: try simulating this problem in VPython. Because I’m a physics… Continue reading Simulated Tape and Universal Behavior
Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson [Library of Babel]
I’ve gotten out of the habit of blogging about the books I read for fun here, mostly because I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading for fun. Not for lack of desire, but because between my job and the kids and the massive amounts of research reading for the book-in-progress, I haven’t had time.… Continue reading Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson [Library of Babel]
A Brief Musical Interlude
Kate is off at Arisia this weekend, so I took the kids to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Where we’ve had good fun sledding and playing with a variety of toys. I’ll be driving home Sunday afternoon, and my parents will be bringing the kids back on Monday, which is the MLK holiday in the US, so… Continue reading A Brief Musical Interlude
Atomic Physics with Sticky Tape
In addition to making a toy model to show the tipping-point behavior of charged pieces of sticky tape, I spent some time on Tuesday trying to do something quantitative with this. Of course, Tuesday is the one day of the week that I don’t teach, and I didn’t want to go to campus to do… Continue reading Atomic Physics with Sticky Tape
You Don’t Know How Valuable Preschool Is Until You Don’t Have It
About five minutes into my class Wednesday, my cell phone rang. I silenced it right away, but recognized the number as the kids’ day care. And I knew right away what it was: The Pip has had a bit of a cough for a while, and wasn’t all that happy that morning. Sure enough, when… Continue reading You Don’t Know How Valuable Preschool Is Until You Don’t Have It
The Flying Bus
“Daddy, you know what? I bet you didn’t know, but my school bus can fly.” “Really? I didn’t know that.” “Yeah, there’s a button up at the front with a picture of a flying bus, and if you press the button, the bus flies.” “That’s amazing.” “Yeah, and guess what? The other day, the bus… Continue reading The Flying Bus
Charged Tape, Toy Models, and Dimensionless Parameters
One of the labs we do in the introductory E&M class I’m teaching this term involves investigating charged particles with sticky tape. If you haven’t seen it before, “invisible” tape picks up an electric charge when it’s peeled off a surface quickly, and with a little care, you can create both positively and negatively charged… Continue reading Charged Tape, Toy Models, and Dimensionless Parameters