The JCC day care is closed today for one of the fall cluster of Jewish holidays, which means I’m spending the morning with The Pip before Kate comes home to take the afternoon shift so I can teach my class. Thus, this is more of a tab clearance sort of exercise than a thoughtful examination… Continue reading Gender Gap Update
Author: Chad Orzel
Trapping Neutrinos?
One of the chapters of the book-in-progress talks about neutrino detection, drawing heavily on a forthcoming book I was sent for blurb/review purposes (about which more later). One of the little quirks of the book is that the author regularly referred to physicists trying to “trap” neutrinos. It took me a while to realize that… Continue reading Trapping Neutrinos?
Laser-Cooled Atoms: Ytterbium
Element: Ytterbium (Yb) Atomic Number: 70 Mass: Seven “stable” isotopes, from 168 to 176 amu. Two of those are nominally radioactive, with half-lives vastly in excess of the age of the universe. Laser cooling wavelength: 399 nm and 556 nm. Doppler cooling limit: 690 μK in the UV and 4.4 μK in the green. Chemical… Continue reading Laser-Cooled Atoms: Ytterbium
On the Interconnectedness of Science
I’ve finished a first pass through all the regular chapters of the book-in-progress (in addition to those in in this progress report, there’s one more in Section 1 about antiques, and three more in Section 4, two about statistics and one about teamwork). I’m starting to do section-level proofreading, looking at blocks of chapters together.… Continue reading On the Interconnectedness of Science
PowerPoint Is a Tool
Over at NPR, Adam Frank has an ode to the use of chalk for teaching science, including a bit of warm fuzzy nostalgia: I have powerful memories of tracking through derivations presented in class when I was a student. When done well, they pinned my attention down. The act of copying what was appearing on… Continue reading PowerPoint Is a Tool
The Adventure Begins
Every year since this blog started in 2002, I’ve marked September 11 with a moment of silence post, as acknowledgement that I don’t have anything to say that would be worth sharing with the Internet. This is the very first year that I’ve had any hesitation about it, because in addition to being a Very… Continue reading The Adventure Begins
September 11, 2013
How to Think Like a Scientist in an Elevator
A couple of months back, TED put out a call for auditions for a chance to speak at one of their events. They asked for a one-minute video, and I said “What the hell, I can do that. I need an ‘elevator pitch’ version of the book-in-progress anyway.” This is the result: So, if you’ve… Continue reading How to Think Like a Scientist in an Elevator
Fantasy Physics Season Preview
While I was away for the weekend, intending to mostly ignore the Internet, Steve Maier tweeted: #FantasyFootball ? What if #FantasyPhysics existed–who would be your picks? This, of course, ended up sucking up a huge amount of mental energy for the rest of the weekend, because it’s such perfect blog fodder. If I’d had a… Continue reading Fantasy Physics Season Preview
Education Is Chaotic
While I’m quoting other people saying smart things, Timothy Burke has another great post on the failures of economic models of higher education There is a lot of information that you could acquire about courses or about colleges that you could reasonably use to assemble a decision matrix. What size is the class or the… Continue reading Education Is Chaotic