I’m not sure what I did to PZ Myers to make him draw my attention to Fred Hutchison, but whatever it was, I apologize. Mr. Hutchison is apparently a columnist writing for a web site run by Alan Keyes– the right-wing kook for people who find David Horowitz to be a little too sedate– and… Continue reading Fred Hutchison: Teaching Opportunity
Category: Physics
Set My Syllabus For Me
I’m currently teaching our sophomore-level modern physics class, which is titled something like “Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Their Applications.” We’ve finished with the basics of Special Relativity and abstract quantum theory, and have entered the mad sprint through applications (Union is on a trimester calendar, so classes end next week)– three classes on atoms and… Continue reading Set My Syllabus For Me
Counterfactual Physics Blogging
OK, let’s say you want to explain something really difficult, like counterfactual computation with quantum interrogation, but you don’t want to actually sit down and do all that typing (let’s say you have a big stack of lab reports to grade, or something). There’s a way to pull this off. What you do is, you… Continue reading Counterfactual Physics Blogging
Top Eleven: We Have a Winner!
The votes are in, and have been carefully tabulated by our bleary-eyed accounting firm (that is, me– I would’ve posted last night, but I went to see Chuck D speak (because I’m down with the old-school rap), and he went on for more than two hours…) . What looked like a runaway victory for Michelson… Continue reading Top Eleven: We Have a Winner!
The Classical Zeno Effect
A Dramatic Presentation of a Classical Analogue to the Quantum Zeno Effect A Play in One Act: John Boy: Good night, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen: Good night John Boy. JB: Are you asleep? ME: No. JB: Are you asleep? ME: No. JB: Are you asleep? ME: No. Repeat several more times Exeunt, pursued by a… Continue reading The Classical Zeno Effect
Top Eleven: Polls Close at 5pm Eastern
This is your last chance to vote for your favorite experiment.
You Can’t Get There From Here
Buried beneath some unseemly but justified squee-ing, Scalzi links to an article about “counterfactal computation”, an experiment in which the group of Paul Kwiat group at Illinois managed to find the results of a quantum computation without running the computer at all. Really, there’s not much to say to that other than “Whoa.” The article… Continue reading You Can’t Get There From Here
Top Eleven: Early Returns
A preliminary report on the standings in the Greatest Physics Experiment voting: Michelson-Morley: 13 Faraday: 7 (including one vote in the Farady post) Roemer: 5 Aspect: 4.5 (one indecisive person voted for both Cavendish and Aspect) Galileo: 3 Rutherford: 3 Cavendish: 1.5 Hertz: 1 (in the comments to the Hertz post) Newton, Hubble, and Mössbauer… Continue reading Top Eleven: Early Returns
Top Eleven: Time to Vote!
The Top Eleven is now complete. Here’s the full list of experiments, with links to my summaries: Galileo Galilei: ~1610: Discovery of the moons of Jupiter, and measurements of the acceleration of falling objects. Ole Roemer ~1675: Measurement of the speed of light by timing the eclipses of Io. Isaac Newton ~1700: Dispersion of light… Continue reading Top Eleven: Time to Vote!
Top Eleven: Alain Aspect
The final and most recent of the Top Eleven is an experiment that goes right to the heart of the weirdness inherent in quantum mechanics. Who: Alain Aspect (1947-present), a French physicist. (Again, Wikipedia is a let-down, but CNRS has useful information.) When: Around 1982 (there are several experiments involved, but the 1982 one is… Continue reading Top Eleven: Alain Aspect