There’s no way I could possibly go through a long history-of-science blog series without mentioning the great Marie Skłodowska Curie, one of the very few people in history to win not one but two Nobel Prizes for her scientific work– if nothing else, Polish pride would demand it. She made a monumental contribution to physics… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 17: Kickstarter in 1921
Category: Physics
Kids Love Breaking Stuff
I visited SteelyKid’s first-grade class yesterday with several liters of liquid nitrogen. Earlier in the fall, they did a science unit on states of matter– solid, liquid, gas– and talked about it in terms of molecules being more spread out, etc. Looking at her homeworks, I said “Oh, damn, if it wasn’t the middle of… Continue reading Kids Love Breaking Stuff
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 16: Undergraduate Research
“You wanted to see me, Herr Professor?” “Hans! Yes, come in, come in. Just going over the account books. Frightful amount of money going out of this place.” “Well, radium is expensive…” “Ha! Oh, and speaking of which– here’s one of the sources. Absent-mindedly dropped the fool thing in my pocket last night when I… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 16: Undergraduate Research
Eureka: Waldo at the Galaxy Zoo
Over at Medium, they’ve published a long excerpt from Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, that gives a good flavor of what the book’s really like. It’s about how the process for solving hidden-object games like the classic Where’s Waldo books is comparable to the process used by Henrietta Leavitt to revolutionize our understanding of the… Continue reading Eureka: Waldo at the Galaxy Zoo
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 15: An Unusual Resume
“…and take care that all the signatures go in the right way round, eh, James? I was able to soothe Mr. Dance last time, but if another copy comes back to be rebound, M. de la Roche will put you out.” “Yessir.” “A little more care, there’s a good lad. Run home, now, we’ll see… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 15: An Unusual Resume
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 14: A Slip of Card
Scientific controversies aren’t always settled by a single dramatic experiment, but it’s a lot of fun when they are. It’s even more fun when they can be carried out with, as the author put it, “without any other apparatus than is at hand to every one.” I’m speaking in this case of the famous “double… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 14: A Slip of Card
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 13: Timing Light
Speaking of the timing of astronomical phenomena, as we were yesterday, the timing of celestial bodies was the key to the first demonstration of one of the pillars of modern physics, the fact that light travels at a finite speed. This actually pre-dates yesterday’s longitude discoveries, which I always forget, because it seems like it… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 13: Timing Light
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 12: Time Tables
Returning to our mostly-chronological ordering after yesterday’s brief excursion, we come to one of the great problems of the 1700’s, namely determining the longitude at sea. Latitude is easy to find, based on the height of the Sun at noon– we told that story last week— but longitude is much trickier. Thanks to the rotation… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 12: Time Tables
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 11: Feynman’s Plate
I’ve been trying to keep to a roughly chronological ordering of these stories, but this slow-motion snow storm that was waiting to greet us on our return from Florida made the schools open on a two-hour delay today, which eats the time I usually use for blogging and books stuff. So I’m going to jump… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 11: Feynman’s Plate
Eureka on the Radio
Yesterday, I drove through the slush to Albany to do an appearance on KERA radio’s “Think” from a studio there. The audio is at that link. It was a bit of a strange experience, because I drove to a place to do the interview in a radio studio, but I was the only one in… Continue reading Eureka on the Radio