It’s a simple question: Who do you prefer, Lorentz or Lorenz? Chaos butterflies, or time dilation. Choose only one.
Category: Physics
Festive Physics
Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer Ouellette offers her Top Ten events at the upcoming World Science Festival in New York City the week after next. The full program is at the festival site, and it looks like there’s even something for the stamp collectors. Probably to keep the cool physics-themed events from being overcrowded.… Continue reading Festive Physics
Quest for Physics
We had a colloquium talk yesterday from the very energetic Jessica Clark of the American Physical Society’s outreach office who talked about the many things that the APS does to bring positive physics experiences to a wide audience. It was a terrific talk, and brought to my attention a couple of programs I hadn’t heard… Continue reading Quest for Physics
The Frankenstein Moment
Over at Swans on Tea, Tom has a great story of his Frankenstein Moment, that moment in science when the lightning flashes, and it’s immediately clear that everything just worked, and you have successfully reanimated your creation, or split the atom, or discovered high-temperature superconductivity, or whatever. As he says, these are rare. My own… Continue reading The Frankenstein Moment
Physics for Babies
Kate and I made a run to Babies “R” Us today, and looked at a bunch more baby stuff. We got a little punchy after a while, so it was perhaps not surprising that I was tremendously amused by the idea of Penguin Bowling. On further reflection, though, it’s really only natural. After all, the… Continue reading Physics for Babies
Digital Is Not Infallible
I’ve been grading lab reports in two different classes, and I’ve been struck once again by the way that students attach mystical properties to anything with a digital readout. The uncertainty used in calculations is invariably put down as half of whatever the least significant digit displayed was, even in cases where the readout visibly… Continue reading Digital Is Not Infallible
Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong
The video that accompanies this PopSci.com article is pretty impressive. A bunch of college kids show off their ability to hit trick shots with ping-pong balls, bouncing them off walls, doors, floors, moving skateboards, people, and items of furniture and into beer cups. As the PopSci piece notes, there’s a good deal of physics in… Continue reading Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong
Relative Dog Motion
As I’m driving down the street, a squirrel darts out into the road a block or so ahead of me. From the back seat, the dog says “Gun it!!!! Hit the squirrel, hit the squirrel, hitthesquirrel!” “Will you sit down and be quiet?” We’re having some work done on the house, and I’m taking her… Continue reading Relative Dog Motion
Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences
I’m going to be busy all day (more or less) at the Steinmetz Symposium, listening to talks about the fantastic things our students have been doing with their research projects. So it’s going to be a “talk among yourselves” day here at Uncertain Principles, for the most part. It’s been a little while since I… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences
Familiarity and Lies-to-Children
One of the interesting things to come out of the switch to Matter & Interactions for our intro classes has been some discussion among my colleagues of how the books treat specific topics. A couple of people have raised concerns that the coverage of certain topics is different from the traditional presentation, in a way… Continue reading Familiarity and Lies-to-Children