For the penultimate advent calendar of science stories post, we’ll turn to a great experimentalist with a great biography. This story also appears in Eureka: Discovering your Inner Scientist, but it’s too good not to re-use. Chien-Shiung Wu was born in china in 1912, at right around the time education of women was first legalized.… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 23: Parity
Category: Experiment
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 22: Hazing
One of the very best books I ran across in the process of doing research for Eureka is The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics by Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann. It’s an extremely detailed treatment of the development of quantum theory, and includes anecdotes that I haven’t seen elsewhere.… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 22: Hazing
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 21: Hot and Cold
Another weekend day, another story I’m going to outsource a bit. In this case, to the original scientist, who at the time of his discovery was a 13-year-old schoolboy in Tanzania: In 1963, when I was in form 3 in Magamba Secondary School, Tanzania, I used to make ice-cream. The boys at the school do… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 21: Hot and Cold
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 20: Dot Physics 1976
We’re going to depart from the chronological ordering again, because it’s the weekend and I have to do a bunch of stuff with the kids. Which means I’m in search of a story I can outsource… In this case, I’m outsourcing to myself– this is a genuine out-take from Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, specifically… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 20: Dot Physics 1976
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 19: Eucatastrophe
As I endlessly repeat, I’m an experimentalist by training an inclination, so I especially appreciate stories about experimental science. There’s something particularly wonderful about the moment when an experiment clicks together, usually after weeks or months of hard, frustrating work, when things just keep breaking. Of course, sometimes, breaking stuff can be a Good Thing.… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 19: Eucatastrophe
Method and Its Discontents
Given that I am relentlessly flogging a book about the universality of the scientific process (Available wherever books are sold! They make excellent winter solstice holiday gifts!), I feel like I ought to try to say something about the latest kerfuffle about the scientific method. This takes the form of an editorial in Nature complaining… Continue reading Method and Its Discontents
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 18: Third Time’s the Charm
The winter solstice holidays are a time for family and togetherness, so building off yesterday’s post about the great Marie Skłodowska Curie, we’ll stay together with her family. Specifically her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric. The Joliot-Curies are possible answers to a number of Nobel Prize trivia questions– only mother and daughter to… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 18: Third Time’s the Charm
Kids Love Breaking Stuff
I visited SteelyKid’s first-grade class yesterday with several liters of liquid nitrogen. Earlier in the fall, they did a science unit on states of matter– solid, liquid, gas– and talked about it in terms of molecules being more spread out, etc. Looking at her homeworks, I said “Oh, damn, if it wasn’t the middle of… Continue reading Kids Love Breaking Stuff
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 16: Undergraduate Research
“You wanted to see me, Herr Professor?” “Hans! Yes, come in, come in. Just going over the account books. Frightful amount of money going out of this place.” “Well, radium is expensive…” “Ha! Oh, and speaking of which– here’s one of the sources. Absent-mindedly dropped the fool thing in my pocket last night when I… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 16: Undergraduate Research
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 14: A Slip of Card
Scientific controversies aren’t always settled by a single dramatic experiment, but it’s a lot of fun when they are. It’s even more fun when they can be carried out with, as the author put it, “without any other apparatus than is at hand to every one.” I’m speaking in this case of the famous “double… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 14: A Slip of Card