Author: Chad Orzel

4th of July, Niskayuna (SteelyKid and The Pip)

The kids with fake bones at the AMNH evolution exhibit.

It’s Independence Day here in the US, so here are some patriotic kid photos for you. “Wait a minute,” you say, “That featured image doesn’t have any flags or fireworks or gilled meat products! How is that patriotic?” “Ah,” I reply,”It was taken at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC last weekend.” Game.… Continue reading 4th of July, Niskayuna (SteelyKid and The Pip)

Science Is Hard?: “A Major in Science? Initial Beliefs and Final Outcomes for College Major and Dropout”

Screenshot of text from the paper discussed.

There was a brief flurry of discussion yesterday kicked off by Matt Yglesias posting People Don’t Major in Science—Because It’s Hard, which more or less says what the title would lead you to believe (either title, since he’s blogging for Slate where they like to give pages titles that don’t match the post titles…). This… Continue reading Science Is Hard?: “A Major in Science? Initial Beliefs and Final Outcomes for College Major and Dropout”

The Department of Persecution Studies

In my darker moods, I sometimes suspect that all academics, regardless of their specialty, are engaged in the same pursuit: searching out and exposing the systematic oppression of… whatever department or program the faculty member speaking at the moment happens to belong to. No matter what field of study they work in, faculty seem to… Continue reading The Department of Persecution Studies

Disappearing Quotes: Sophisticated Sports Coverage

One of the great frustrations of my intellectual life, such as it is, is the problem of the disappearing quote. This is a function of having acquired a broad liberal education (in the sense of “liberal arts college” not the sense of “person to the left of Rush Limbaugh”) in a somewhat haphazard manner. My… Continue reading Disappearing Quotes: Sophisticated Sports Coverage

260 Million Scientists a Month

Angry Birds screenshot from Rhett Allain's analysis of the yellow bird. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/physics-of-the-yellow-angry-bird/

The day I bought my iPad, as I was taking it out of the box, SteelyKid (then 3) came bopping into my office, spotted it, and declared “I want to play Angry Birds!” It’s a remarkable demonstration of the genius of their product: not only have they created a game that a three-year-old can play,… Continue reading 260 Million Scientists a Month

Atom by Atom Interaction: “Direct Measurement of the van der Waals Interaction between Two Rydberg Atoms”

Figure 2 from the paper described in the text.

I’m always a little ambivalent about writing up papers that have also been written up in Physics: on the one hand, they make a free PDF of the paper available, which allows me to reproduce figures from the paper in my post, since I’m not breaking a paywall to do it. Which makes it much… Continue reading Atom by Atom Interaction: “Direct Measurement of the van der Waals Interaction between Two Rydberg Atoms”

More on “Death Rays”: Another Estimation Technique

One of the great things about “Fermi Problems” is that there are multiple ways of attacking them. So, for example, when considering the death ray plot yesterday, I used medical devices as an example system to assess the plausibility of the plot, while Physics Buzz talked total energy. But those aren’t the only ways to… Continue reading More on “Death Rays”: Another Estimation Technique

On “Death Rays”

One bad thing about SteelyKid’s preschool graduation yesterday was that it drained my phone battery, causing me to miss an interview request from a local TV station looking for somebody to talk about a a couple of local guys arrested for a plot to build a “death ray” from X-ray components. This is pretty far… Continue reading On “Death Rays”