Uncertain Principles Archive
Physics, Politics, Pop Culture; formerly on ScienceBlogs
A little while back, I used a photo of SteelyKid’s toy Newton’s cradle as the photo of the day, with a bonus video: I mentioned that I was going to do some analysis of this at some point, but didn’t have time right then. I had a bit of time to poke at this yesterday, […]
I’ve been slacking in my obligation to use this blog for self-promotion, but every now and then I remember, so here are two recent things where I was interviewed by other people: — I spoke on the phone to a reporter from Popular Mechanics who was writing a story about “radionics” and “wishing boxes,” a […]
A few years back, I did a couple of posts on the physics of a sad balloon (that is, a helium balloon that can no longer lift itself up to the ceiling), the first on simple buoyancy, the second on how long it takes for the helium to leak out. These were based on only […]
For the 42nd installment of this photo-a-day thing, it seems appropriate to try to do some SCIENCE! to get an Answer. So, here’s a composite of a bunch of images I took yesterday in order to investigate something: OK, this needs some explanation… So, I do a lot of shooting with moderately wide-angle lenses (either […]
Friday was yet another heavy kid-wrangling day, as the Pip had a minor surgical procedure in the early morning, which required general anaesthesia. This was done before 9am, but we had to keep him home from school for the day to watch for ill effects. Of which there were none, so he and I went […]
Another couple of weeks of science-y blogging at Forbes: — Football Physics: Deflategate Illustrates Key Concepts: In which I use the ever-popular silly scandal over deflated footballs as an excuse to talk about three-body recombination. — The Annoying Physics Of Air Resistance: Air resistance is an annoyance to be abstracted out in intro physics classes, […]
It’s rained fairly steadily for the last couple of days, which is to be expected. This also sent me to the back yard in hopes of getting a very particular effect for the photo of the day, that I had seen on a poster from the APS’s student photo contest a few years ago: Here […]
The image here of a pancake cooking isn’t particularly interesting in its own right, other than as documentation of our weekend ritual at Chateau Steelypips. Saturday and sunday mornings, Kate sleeps in while the kids watch cartoons and I cook pancakes for them. SteelyKid absolutely drowns hers in maple syrup, then refuses to eat them, […]
I spent a while today shooting video of myself on the back porch. Which technically qualifies for the photo-a-day project, because I used the video feature of my new camera. So, here’s a still frame. What am I doing here, and why? You’ll have to wait until I finish the analysis and write it up […]
I got a little bit of time today to play with the new lens, which included a couple of nice shots of the kids. I’m trying not to have this be “photo of the kids of the day,” though, so here’s a different shot making use of the limited depth of field of the f/2.8 […]