PhysicsWeb provides me with yet another blog post topic today, posting a lament about the death of letter writing, which makes life more difficult for historians: Now that e-mail has replaced letter writing as the principal means of informal communication, one has to feel sorry for future science historians, who will be unable to use… Continue reading Blogging is the Answer
Category: Physics
Regrettable Physics Update
In the last week, The IoP’s Physics Web has posted two news updates that fall into the category of “regrettable physics,” here defined as “the sort of work that makes Daniel Davies say mean things about physicists.” I’m talking here about the application of physics concepts to fields where they’re neither immediately relevant nor particularly… Continue reading Regrettable Physics Update
Blame Where Blame Is Due
A lot of people have commented on this New York Times article on science budgets, mostly echoing the author’s lament about the negative effects of operating at 2006 funding levels. I really don’t have much to add to that, but it’s worth reminding people where the blame for this belongs: Last year, Congress passed just… Continue reading Blame Where Blame Is Due
Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
Paul Davies’s forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled “Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life,” so you know that he’s not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the “Goldilocks Enigma,” and what others refer to as “fine-tuning”– basically, how do you account for… Continue reading Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
Stupid Idle Question
While working on a review of a book that talks about the fortuitously bio-friendly constants of nature (review forthcoming, don’t worry), I mistyped “ratio of proton to electron masses” and “ratio of proton to electron charges.” Which is, of course, 1, and thus not a terribly interesting ratio. But that got me wondering: is there… Continue reading Stupid Idle Question
Statement on Teaching
One of the standard elements of most academic hiring and promotion applications, at least at a small liberal arts college, is some sort of statement from the candidate about teaching. This is called different things at different places– “statement of teaching philosophy” is a common term for it, and the tenure process here calls for… Continue reading Statement on Teaching
Philosophia Naturalis
I’ve got lab this morning, so I don’t have time for detailed physics blogging today. Happily, there’s a new edition of the physics-centered blog carnival Philosophia Naturalis posted today, which should provide plenty of physics content to get your day off to a good start.
Mirror, Mirror
A little bit before Christmas, I spent an afternoon swapping mirrors out of one line of the apparatus. I was losing too much of the laser light before it went into the chamber, and replacing the mirrors increased the power entering the apparatus by a factor of two or so. Here’s a picture of the… Continue reading Mirror, Mirror
Alternate History of Physics
Kind of an arcane philosophical point, here, so I’ll be a little surprised if anybody responds, but this occurred to me while writing the previous post, and I thought I’d throw it out there. In the previous post, I quoted Feynman’s one sentence for the future: Everything is made of atoms. and suggested as an… Continue reading Alternate History of Physics
One Sentence
Some time back, Dave Munger called me out for the one sentence challenge, originally phrased thusly: Physicist Richard Feynman once said that if all knowledge about physics was about to expire the one sentence he would tell the future is that “Everything is made of atoms”. What one sentence would you tell the future about… Continue reading One Sentence