Paul Krugman is now a famour economist, but many years ago, he was “an oppressed assistant professor, caught up in the academic rat race.” So, he did what any good academic would do in that situation: he wrote a silly paper to cheer himself up. In this case, a paper discussing the issues that arise… Continue reading Interstellar Economics
Category: Physics
Lab Visit Report: Four-Wave Mixing
The next lab visit experiments I want to talk about are really the epitome of what I called the “NIST Paradigm” in an earlier post. These are experiments on “four-wave mixing” done by Colin McCormick (who I TA’d in freshman physics, back in the day), a post-doc in Paul Lett’s lab at NIST. As Paul… Continue reading Lab Visit Report: Four-Wave Mixing
Talk Like a Physicist
Today has been dubbed “Talk Like a Physicist Day”. Why? Because we’re at least as cool as pirates, that’s why. Over at Swans on Tea, Tom offers some vocabulary tips: Use “canonical” when you mean “usual” or “standard.” As in, “the canonical example of talking like a physicist is to use the word ‘canonical.’” Use… Continue reading Talk Like a Physicist
Lab Visit Report: Francium
As I mentioned a few days ago, I visited Luis Orozco’s lab during our trip to DC last week. I already talked about his cavity QED stuff, but that’s only one of the projects under development. He’s also working on a next-generation apparatus for the laser cooling and trapping of francium, to be done at… Continue reading Lab Visit Report: Francium
Lab Visit Report: Biophysics
One of the many very cool things going on in the Laser Cooling Empire at NIST is a series of experiments using optical tweezers to study various biological systems. I used to share an office with the biochemist in the group, who was there to handle the wet chemistry that physicists are notoriously bad at.… Continue reading Lab Visit Report: Biophysics
Lorentz Contracted Asteroids
Via email, Reference Games, featuring two versions of the classic video game “Asteroids” (well, it’s a classic if you’re my age…). The cool wrinkle: light speed in the game is set to be very low, and you can toggle back and forth between the ship frame and the frame of the background stars, to see… Continue reading Lorentz Contracted Asteroids
Lab Visit Report: Cold Plasmas
Another of the labs I visited while in DC was Steve Rolston’s lab at the University of Maryland. This actually contains the apparatus I worked on as a graduate student, including many of the same quirky pieces of hardware– Steve was the PI (Principal Investigator) for the metastable xenon lab in the Phillips group at… Continue reading Lab Visit Report: Cold Plasmas
A User’s Guide to Vacuum Pumps Part 2: Quiet Pumps
In the previous post on this topic, I discussed the various types of noisy vacuum pumps, both clean and dirty varieties. This time out, we’ll deal with the quiet pumps, the ones that don’t deafen people working in the lab. Quiet and Dirty: The quintessential quiet and dirty pump is an oil diffusion pump. These… Continue reading A User’s Guide to Vacuum Pumps Part 2: Quiet Pumps
Physics Comes Marching In
The annual March Meeting of the American Physical Society is happening this week in New Orleans. This is the biggest physics conference of the year, by far, with close to 7,000 attendees– despite what you might think from the Internet, the Condensed Matter crowd who attend the March Meeting significantly outnumber particle physicists and high-energy… Continue reading Physics Comes Marching In
Lab Visit Report: Cavity QED
While Kate was off being all lawyerly at her NAAG workshop, I spent my time visiting my old group at NIST, and some colleagues at the University of Maryland. This wasn’t just a matter of feeling like I ought to do something work-like while she was workshopping– I genuinely enjoy touring other people’s labs, and… Continue reading Lab Visit Report: Cavity QED