Category: Physics

“Talking Dogs and Galileian Blogs: Social Media for Communicating Science”

That’s the title of the talk I gave yesterday at Vanderbilt, and here are the slides: Talking Dogs and Galileian Blogs: Social Media for Communicating Science from Chad Orzel The central idea is the same as in past versions of the talk– stealing Robert Krulwich’s joke contrasting the publication styles of Newton and Galileo to… Continue reading “Talking Dogs and Galileian Blogs: Social Media for Communicating Science”

“Talking Dogs and Galileian Blogs” at Vanderbilt, Thursday 3/26/15

I mentioned last week that I’m giving a talk at Vanderbilt tomorrow, but as they went to the trouble of writing a press release, the least I can do is share it: It’s clear that this year’s Forman lecturer at Vanderbilt University, Chad Orzel, will talk about physics to almost anyone. After all, two of… Continue reading “Talking Dogs and Galileian Blogs” at Vanderbilt, Thursday 3/26/15

How Does Angular Momentum Emerge?

Yesterday’s post about VPython simulation of the famous bicycle wheel demo showed that you can get the precession and nutation from a simulation that only includes forces. But this is still kind of mysterious, from the standpoint of basic physics intuition. Specifically, it’s sort of hard to see how any of this produces a force… Continue reading How Does Angular Momentum Emerge?

The Emergence of Angular Momentum

The third of the great physics principles introduced in our introductory mechanics courses is the conservation of angular momentum, or the Angular Momentum Principle in the language of the Matter and Interactions curriculum we use. This tends to be one of the hardest topics to introduce, in no small part because it’s the last thing… Continue reading The Emergence of Angular Momentum

Favorite Quantum Physics in Fiction?

We’ll be accepting applications for The Schrödinger Sessions workshop at JQI through tomorrow. We already have 80-plus applicants for fewer than 20 planned spots, including a couple of authors I really, really like and some folks who have won awards, etc., so we’re going to have our work cut out for us picking the attendees…… Continue reading Favorite Quantum Physics in Fiction?

Just How Idiotic Are GPAs?

Comparison of "GPA" for simulated B students with and without the intermediate step of passing through letter grades.

Yesterday’s quick rant had the slightly clickbait-y title “GPAs are Idiotic,” because, well, I’m trying to get people to read the blog, y’know. It’s a little hyperbolic, though, and wasn’t founded in anything but a vague intuition that the crude digitization step involved in going from numerical course averages to letter grades then back to… Continue reading Just How Idiotic Are GPAs?

Upcoming Talks: New Paltz Tonight, Nashville Next Week

I keep forgetting to mention these, but I have two talks coming up: 1) Tonight, March 17, I’m talking about Eureka to the Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association on the campus of SUNY New Paltz. This is a version of the talk I gave in Bristol, UK over the summer, but with the soccer content replaced with… Continue reading Upcoming Talks: New Paltz Tonight, Nashville Next Week

The Physics of Our Back Gate

Diagrams representing the two- and three-hinge configurations for hanging the gate to our back yard.

It’s winter, and as usually happens in winter, I’m having a hard time opening the gate to our back yard. Why? It’s not the snow, it’s physics. We have a standing policy that as much as possible, Emmy goes in and out through the back door for walks and small-animal-chasing in the backyard. This has… Continue reading The Physics of Our Back Gate

Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, Now in a Different Voice

Kate’s a big consumer of audio books, but I’ve never been able to listen to them. About five minutes in, I doze right off, every time. However, I know there are a lot of folks like Kate who love audio books and listen to them while commuting, so I’m very happy to announce that Audible… Continue reading Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, Now in a Different Voice