Physics Blogging Round-Up: Camera Tricks, College Advice, Hot Fans, and Lots of Quantum

Several weeks of silence here, for a bunch of reasons that mostly boil down to “being crazy busy.” I’ve got a bunch of physics posts over at Forbes during that interval, though: — The Camera Trick That Justifies The Giant Death Star: I busted out camera lenses and the kids’ toys to show how you… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Camera Tricks, College Advice, Hot Fans, and Lots of Quantum

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Roman Engineering, Water, and Baseball

It’s been a month since the last links dump of posts from Forbes, though, really, I took a couple of weeks off there, so it’s been less than that in terms of active blogging time. But I’ve put up a bunch of stuff in July, so here are some links: — The Physics Of Ancient… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Roman Engineering, Water, and Baseball

Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

Tourists taking photos of each other in the Forum.

When I was going through the huge collection of photos I have from the Forum in Rome, I kept running across pictures containing two young Asian women (neither of them Kate). This isn’t because I was stalking them, but because they were everywhere, stopping for long periods in front of virtually every significant ruin and… Continue reading Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Mundane Space, Spectroscopy, Changing Constants, Rest Energy, Magnetic Sensing, Wiffle Balls, and Revolutions

Another few weeks of physics blogging at Forbes, collected here for your convenience. — Commercialization Of Space: Three Cheers For The Mundane: Some belated but brief comments on the SpaceApps conference I went to down in NYC. — How Studying Atoms On Earth Helps Us Learn About Other Planets: As a snobby grad student in… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Mundane Space, Spectroscopy, Changing Constants, Rest Energy, Magnetic Sensing, Wiffle Balls, and Revolutions

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Books, Entanglement, Optics, Many-Worlds, Two Cultures, and Clocks

A whole bunch of physics posts over at Forbes so far this month: —Recent Physics Books: Gravitational Waves and Brief Lessons: Short reviews of Janna Levin’s Black Hole Blues and Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. —The Real Reasons Quantum Entanglement Doesn’t Allow Faster-Than-Light Communication: Expanding on and correcting some stuff I didn’t like… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Books, Entanglement, Optics, Many-Worlds, Two Cultures, and Clocks

Division of Labor Is a Good Thing for Science and Skepticism

Noted grouchy person John Horgan has found a new way to get people mad at him on the Internet, via a speech-turned-blog-post taking organized Skeptic groups to task for mostly going after “soft targets”. This has generated lots of angry blog posts in response, and a far greater number of people sighing heavily and saying… Continue reading Division of Labor Is a Good Thing for Science and Skepticism

Physics Blogging Round-Up: ARPES, Optics, Band Gaps, Radiation Pressure, Home Science, and Catastrophe

SteelyKid's digital microscope looking at hair on a Lego frame.

It’s been a while since I last rounded up physics posts from Forbes, so there’s a good bunch of stuff on this list: — How Do Physicists Know What Electrons Are Doing Inside Matter?: An explanation of Angle-Resolved Photo-Electron Spectroscopy (ARPES), one of the major experimental techniques in condensed matter. I’m trying to figure out… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: ARPES, Optics, Band Gaps, Radiation Pressure, Home Science, and Catastrophe