As previously noted, I spent most of last week at the 2013 DAMOP meeting, where I listened to a whole bunch of talks. At some point, I was listening to a talk, and said “I bet this guy hasn’t given a lot of these before.” What was the give-away? The fact that he almost never… Continue reading The Quirks of Scientific Public Speaking
Category: Physics
Experiment and Theory in the Popular Imagination
A little while back, I posted about the pro-theorist bias in popular physics, and Ashutosh Jogalekar offers a long and detailed response, which of course was posted on a day when I spent six hours driving to Quebec City for a conference. Sigh. Happily, ZapperZ and Tom at Swans On Tea offer more or less… Continue reading Experiment and Theory in the Popular Imagination
Angry Birds, Furious Forces! by Rhett Allain
Rhett at Dot Physics departed ScienceBlogs before NAtional Geographic fully took over, but still managed to connect with their book division for a physics text. This is part of a series they’re doing tied in with the folks from Rovio, makers of the world’s most popular smart-phone time-waster, and, as the title suggests, it uses… Continue reading Angry Birds, Furious Forces! by Rhett Allain
Real Scientists Have Families, Too: Photo Edition
While we’re revisiting blog topics of the recent past, another item from this weekend’s visit to the Ithaca Sciencenter, in the form of the picture above. For those with images off, or who read via RSS and won’t see the picture, it’s a photo of one of the inspirational plaques they have lining the walls… Continue reading Real Scientists Have Families, Too: Photo Edition
On Journalists and Scientists Talking
Last week’s post about communications between scientists and journalists sparked a bit of discussion, and prompted the folks at the IoP’s Physics Focus blog to ask me for a guest post advising journalists on how to talk to scientists. The post is now live, with the self-explanatory headline How Journalists Can Help the Scientists They… Continue reading On Journalists and Scientists Talking
Mysteries of the Simulated Pendulum
Last week, I spent a bunch of time using VPython to simulate a simple pendulum, which was a fun way to fritter away several hours (yes, I’m a great big nerd), and led to some fun physics. I had a little more time to kill, so I did one of the things I mentioned as… Continue reading Mysteries of the Simulated Pendulum
American Physicists and the Under-rating of Experiments
At Scientific American’s blog network, Ashutosh Jogalekar muses about the “greatest American physicist”, eventually voting for Josiah Willard Gibbs, one of the pioneers of statistical mechanics. As both times I took StatMech (as an undergrad and in grad school), it was at 8:30 in the morning, I retain almost no memory of the subject, and… Continue reading American Physicists and the Under-rating of Experiments
Simulating a Pendulum
There’s a famous story about Richard Feynman at Cornell suffering from the science equivalent of writer’s block, after WWII. He was depressed and feeling like everything he did was pointless, until one day he spotted a student throwing a plate up in the air in the cafeteria. As the plate spun, it wobbled, and the… Continue reading Simulating a Pendulum
Homework Is Evil?: “The benefits of completing homework for students with different aptitudes in an introductory physics course”
One of the perennial problems of teaching intro physics is getting students to do their homework, so I was very interested to see Andy Rundquist on Twitter post a link to a paper on the arxiv titled “How different incentives affect homework completion in introductory physics courses.” When I shared this with the rest of… Continue reading Homework Is Evil?: “The benefits of completing homework for students with different aptitudes in an introductory physics course”
Wolfgang Pauli, Father of the arXiv
The book-in-progress (which is coming along, albeit slowly, thanks for asking) is built around making analogies between scientific discoveries and ordinary activities. This necessarily means telling a lot of historical stories, which is both good and bad. The bad part is that actual history is way messier than the streamlined version you get to use… Continue reading Wolfgang Pauli, Father of the arXiv