The great thing about using Google to vanity search for articles about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, or at least one of the great things about it, is that it’s world-wide. Thus, this Dutch roundup of new books, which includes mine. This is what they have to say: Een erg geestig boek is… Continue reading Perfect for Readers Who Already Have Eaten Cheese in Physics
Category: Physics
Single-Photon Cooling: Making Maxwell’s Demon
As mentioned previously, I’ve been reading Sean Carroll’s Wheel arrow of time book, which necessarily includes a good bit of discussion of “Maxwell’s Demon,” a thought experiment famously proposed by James Clerk Maxwell as something that would allow you to cool a gas without obviously increasing entropy. The “demon” mans a trapdoor between a sample… Continue reading Single-Photon Cooling: Making Maxwell’s Demon
Trapping Ions With Light
There was a flurry of stories last week about an arxiv preprint on optical trapping of an ion. Somewhat surprisingly for an arxiv-only paper, it got a write-up in Physics World. While I generally like Physics World, I have to take issue with their description of why this is interesting: In the past, the trapping… Continue reading Trapping Ions With Light
Fifty Years of Solutions Finding Problems
2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser. To mark the occasion, the American Physical society has launched LaserFest, which will involve a large number of public events over the next year. The website includes a bunch of cool things explaining the physics of lasers, and a timeline of laser history with… Continue reading Fifty Years of Solutions Finding Problems
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: All the News That’s Fit to Keep Off the Web Page
A few weeks back, I spoke on the phone with a freelance writer who was doing a piece for the Albany Times Union. She was putting together a joint article on How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and the Atomville book put together by Jill Linz and Cindy Schwarz (at Skidmore and Vassar, respectively).… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: All the News That’s Fit to Keep Off the Web Page
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Customer Reviews Edition
Having seen other authors led into destruction by responding to customer reviews on Amazon, I tend to approach the customer reviews of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog with some trepidation. It turns out, though, that they’re really good. And I don’t mean that in a Harriet Kalunser kind of way– the positive reviews… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Customer Reviews Edition
Neil Bates Owes Me $160
That’s the bill for the time that I spent on deciphering his supposed falsification of decoherence. I don’t want anyone to fall for his false argument, so here’s the correct explanation of the scenario, to save other people the trouble. The center of his so-called “proof” is this modified Mach-Zehnder Inteferometer: Light enters at the… Continue reading Neil Bates Owes Me $160
Public Knowledge of Science: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t
The NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators report came out not too long ago, and the bulk of it is, as usual, spent on quasi-quantitative measures of scientific productivity– numbers of degrees granted, numbers of patent applications for various countries, etc. I find all of those things pretty deeply flawed, so I tend to skip past… Continue reading Public Knowledge of Science: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Categorization
We’re once again in the “things are in the pipeline, but nothing has been posted recently” mode, which is a good excuse for some Amazon neepery. Since the AP review came out, and was printed in 20-odd papers, the sales rank has climbed back into the four digits, and has spent the last few days… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Categorization
Where I’m Going to Be: Physics Conferences
I’ve mentioned before that I’m going to be giving an invited talk in the LaserFest session at the APS March Meeting. I finally got around to registering for the meeting, and booking my travel. $1,500 on the college credit card– whee! The March Meeting program is one of the more intimidating meeting programs I’ve ever… Continue reading Where I’m Going to Be: Physics Conferences