In response to my post about Amazon sales-rank tracking, Matthew Beckler created just such a tracker: That’s the last few days’ worth of hourly rankings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, as of 10am Eastern. Enormous dork that I am, I find this really fascinating, and not just in an absolute-number sense (because,… Continue reading Quantization of Books
Category: Physics
Unclear on the Concept
I was sitting in my office on campus, working on some computer stuff, when I noticed a bunch of guys from Facilities out in the hall, bustling around doing something. A few minutes later, one of them stopped right outside my door, and called into the main Facilities office on his cell phone. “We’re up… Continue reading Unclear on the Concept
Making Cold Atoms Look Like Electrons
One of the things I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post about why I like AMO physics is that AMO systems have proven to be outstanding tools for solving problems from other fields of physics. In particular, ultra-cold atoms have proven to be a fantastic venue for studying problems from condensed matter physics. There’s a… Continue reading Making Cold Atoms Look Like Electrons
Poll: Cat Vacuuming
A purely hypothetical situation for today’s poll. Purely. You have agreed to read and review six grant proposals by Sunday. Today is Thursday, and you have not read them yet. What do you do?(poll) If anybody needs me, I’ll be in an undisclosed location not responding to email.
DonorsChoose Payoff: Why AMO Physics?
Months ago, during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I offered to answer questions from people who donated to the Challenge. I then promptly forgot to respond to the questions sent in. Mea maxima culpa. Here’s a way-too-late response to a good question from “tcmJOE”: I’ve spent the past few years trying to explore physics and figure out… Continue reading DonorsChoose Payoff: Why AMO Physics?
How to Teach Physics to Other People’s Dogs
John Scalzi sends along photographic proof of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog working for a dog who isn’t Emmy: This isn’t quite an “in the wild” shot, as it’s not at a store or a store-bought copy (John wrote a blurb for the book, so he got sent a copy), but we’re getting… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Other People’s Dogs
Using Molecules to Search for New Physics
I’ve made a couple of oblique references to this over the past couple of months, but I have an article in the new issue of Physics World, on experiments using molecules to search for an electric dipole moment of the electron: When most of us think about searching for physics beyond the Standard Model –… Continue reading Using Molecules to Search for New Physics
The Bohr-Einstein Debates, With Puppets
Back during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised to do a re-enactment of the Bohr-Einstein debates using puppets if you contributed enough to claim $2,000 of the Hewlett-Packard contribution to the Social Media Challenge. I obviously aimed too low, because the final take was $4064.70, more than twice the threshold for a puppet show. So, I… Continue reading The Bohr-Einstein Debates, With Puppets
Coming Soon, Frame-by-Frame Video Analysis of ScienceBlogs
Rhett Allain’s Dot Physics has joined ScienceBlogs. Sweet. Update your RSS readers accordingly. That is all.
More Early Reviews of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is three weeks from tomorrow, but a couple of new reviews have been posted, one linkable, the other not so much. The linkable one is from one of our contest winners, Eric Goebelbecker, at Dog Spelled Forward (an excellent name for a dog-related… Continue reading More Early Reviews of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog