A bunch of smallish items that have been failing to resolve into full-fledged blog posts for a little while now, thrown together here because I don’t have anything better to post this morning: — When is doubt, start with self-promotion: Physics World includes How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in their holiday gift books… Continue reading Monday Miscellany
Category: Academia
Academic Poll: Lesser Evils
Over at Backreaction, Bee runs through the pros and cons of different presentation methods for academic talks. As she quite correctly notes, both PowerPoint presentations and chalk talks have strengths and weaknesses. You can give a good talk with either, and a bad talk with either. This does suggest a topic for a reader poll,… Continue reading Academic Poll: Lesser Evils
Two Cultures Within Science
The great British physicist Ernest Rutherford once said “In science, there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.” This is kind of the ultimate example of the arrogance of physicists, given a lovely ironic twist by the fact that when Rutherford won a Nobel Prize, it was in Chemistry. (He won for discovering… Continue reading Two Cultures Within Science
How to Sell Me a Picture Book
The JCC, where SteelyKid goes to day care, is having a book sale, so the lobby has been full of books for sale the last few days as we’ve headed out. Getting SteelyKid away from the books is pretty difficult, as you would expect from our daughter. We’ve mostly avoided getting anything, but yesterday, I… Continue reading How to Sell Me a Picture Book
The Problem of the Humanities
I’ve probably gotten a dozen pointers to Gregory Petsko’s open letter in support of the humanities, addressed to the President of SUNY-Albany, over the last couple of weeks (the link is to a reposting of the letter at Inside Higher Ed; it was originally on Petsko’s own blog). I haven’t linked to it or commented… Continue reading The Problem of the Humanities
Academic Poll: Proctoring
I’m giving the final exam in my introductory E&M class this morning, which means spending a couple of hours sitting in a room full of students taking a test and doing my best not to fall asleep. As far as I’m concerned, getting rid of exam proctoring is the best argument for an honor code… Continue reading Academic Poll: Proctoring
Academic Poll: Course Selection
We’ve just recently completed pre-registration for Winter term classes, so I’ve been thinking a bit about why students do and do not sign up for things. Thus, a poll: You are a college student considering an elective class in your major, and you see it has a lab. Your reaction is:survey software Feel free to… Continue reading Academic Poll: Course Selection
Physics Job Market: Same As It Ever Was
The American Institute of Physics has a statistics division that produces lots of interesting analyses of issues relevant to the discipline. A couple of them were released just recently, including one on the job status of new Ph.D.’s (PDF). The key graph from the report is this one: The text of the report talks up… Continue reading Physics Job Market: Same As It Ever Was
Best. Lab. EVER.
Today’s a lab day in my main class for the term, with a fairly involved experiment to measure the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. This is going to be all kinds of fun, because 1) I can’t get into the room to set anything up until an hour before the start of class, and 2)… Continue reading Best. Lab. EVER.
Socialization of Toddlers
In last weekend’s post about arguments from innate differences, I suggested that I might be willing to illustrate my position with adorable toddler pictures. On thinking more about it, I’m a little hesitant to write about this at length, because it could easily topple over into arrogant-physicist territory. But then, it’s an excuse to post… Continue reading Socialization of Toddlers