I’m rooting around in my bag for a pen, and pull out a laser pointer by mistake. Since I’d really prefer not to be grading, I flip it on and shine it on the floor next to the spot where Emmy is half-dozing. She immediately leaps up (she’s pretty spry for a dog of 12…),… Continue reading How Not to Control the Weather for Your Dog
Category: Optics
Why Is Snow White?
It didn’t make the news, because skittish media types are mostly based in New York City and thus don’t care about anything north of Westchester County, but we had a big snow storm yesterday. It started snowing Sunday night, though, and kept up through pretty much dinnertime Monday. Both the local schools and the snow-day… Continue reading Why Is Snow White?
Particle-Wave Duality for Eight-Year-Olds
Over at Scientific American’s Frontiers for Young Minds blog, they have a great post on what happens when you ask scientists to explain key elements of a different research field. It’s pretty funny, and rings very true, as SteelyKid asks me tons of science questions, very few of which have anything to do with atomic,… Continue reading Particle-Wave Duality for Eight-Year-Olds
Science Stories: Commercial Instincts
(When I launched the Advent Calendar of Science Stories series back in December, I had a few things in mind, but wasn’t sure I’d get through 24 days. In the end, I had more than enough material, and in fact didn’t end up using a few of my original ideas. So I’ll do a few… Continue reading Science Stories: Commercial Instincts
The Sun Is Red Because The Sky Is Blue
SteelyKid missed the bus this morning– she was dressed and ready, but I was talking to Kate, and if there isn’t a person at the end of the driveway when the bus comes around the corner, they won’t stop. So I drove her over to school myself (which is faster, anyway). The GE research lab… Continue reading The Sun Is Red Because The Sky Is Blue
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
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 9: Newton’s Bodkin
I tooke a bodkine gh & put it betwixt my eye & [the] bone as neare to [the] backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye [with the] end of it (soe as to make [the] curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles r, s,… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 9: Newton’s Bodkin
Nobel Prize for Blue LEDs
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for the development of blue LED’s. As always, this is kind of fascinating to watch evolve in the social media sphere, because as a genuinely unexpected big science story, journalists don’t have pre-written articles based on an early… Continue reading Nobel Prize for Blue LEDs
Finding Extrasolar Planets with Lasers
On Twitter Sunday morning, the National Society of Black Physicsts account retweeted this: Using Lasers to Lock Down #Exoplanet Hunting #Space http://t.co/0TN4DDo7LF — ✨The Solar System✨ (@The_SolarSystem) September 28, 2014 I recognized the title as a likely reference to the use of optical frequency combs as calibration sources for spectrometry, which is awesome stuff. Unfortunately,… Continue reading Finding Extrasolar Planets with Lasers
Son of Interstellar Laser Communications
I didn’t plan to do a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the optics of sending messages with lasers, but then I starting idly thinking about detection, prompted in part by a bunch of conversations with my summer students about single-photon detectors. which led to scribbling on the back of an envelope, which led to Googling,… Continue reading Son of Interstellar Laser Communications