My 20-year college reunion is coming up at the start of next month (at the end of the week of DAMOP in Quebec– I’m going to be completely wiped out…), so I’ve been thinking a bit about nostalgia. A little while back, the subject of reunions came up on an email list, and somebody trotted… Continue reading Best. Arbitrary Four-Year Window. EVER!
Category: Physics
Return of The Physics Bus
My parents have a DVD of the Bacon Brothers singing “The Wheels on the Bus” over an animated scene, which The Pip loves and insists on watching over, and over, and over, and over… As the parent sitting through this on Sunday morning, I got a little punchy over on Twitter, and invented some quantum-physics-themed… Continue reading Return of The Physics Bus
Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution by John Gribbin
Erwin Schrödinger is one of the more colorful figures in physics history. He’s best known for Emmy’s favorite thought experiment, of course, which attempts to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum physics through locking a cat in a box. This overshadows the Schrödinger Equation, the central equation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, which won him a Nobel… Continue reading Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution by John Gribbin
Time Is What You Measure With a Clock
Last year, Alan Alda posed a challenge to science communicators, to explain a flame in terms that an 11-year old could understand. this drew a lot of responses, and some very good winners. This year’s contest, though still called the “Flame Challenge,” asked for an answer to the question “What Is Time?” This is a… Continue reading Time Is What You Measure With a Clock
Playground Physics
The playground outside SteedlyKid’s day care, amazingly in this litigious age, has a merry-go-round, a rotating disc with a really good bearing. The kids can really get the thing flying, which is kind of terrifying at times. But on the bright side, it’s an excellent venue for the physics of angular momentum: In the embedded… Continue reading Playground Physics
Explaining, Education, and Outreach
A couple of days ago, Alom Shaha posted on the new Physics Focus blog (by the way, there’s a new Physics Focus blog…) about his dissatisfaction with some popular books: I recently read a popular science book on a topic that I felt I needed to learn more about. The book was well written, ideas… Continue reading Explaining, Education, and Outreach
On Talent in Sports and Science
Nobody’s ever going to mistake me for an elite basketball player. I’m taller than average (about 6’6″, a hair under 2m in SI units), but I’m not especially quick, or agile, or all that good a jumper. And I’m carrying at least 40lbs of extra weight above what a really good player my size would… Continue reading On Talent in Sports and Science
Real Scientists Have Families, Too
I was re-reading bits of James Gleick’s Feynman biography, and ran across a bit near the end (page 397 of my hardcover from 1992) talking about his relationship with his children, talking about how ordinary he seemed at home.I particularly liked the sentence “Belatedly it dawned on them that not all their friends could look… Continue reading Real Scientists Have Families, Too
E. O. Wilson and Learning the Wrong Lesson
One of the reasons I held off on commenting on the whole E. O. Wilson math op-ed thing, other than not having time to blog, was that his comments were based on his own experiences. And, you know, who am I to gainsay the personal experiences of a justly famous scientist? At the same time,… Continue reading E. O. Wilson and Learning the Wrong Lesson
Math and Science Are Not Cleanly Separable
One of the hot topics of the moment is the E. O. Wilson op-ed lamenting the way math scares students off from science, and downplaying the need for mathematical skill (this is not news, really– he said more or less the same thing a few years ago, but the Wall Street Journal published it to… Continue reading Math and Science Are Not Cleanly Separable