I’m grading exam papers at the dining room table when Emmy trots in. “Hey, dude,” she says. “Where do we keep the superconducting wire?” I’m not really paying attention, so I start to answer before I understand the question. “Hmm? Wire is in the basement, next to the–wait, what?” “The superconducting wire. Where do we… Continue reading Looking for the Bacon Boson
Category: Physics
Dog Physics: More Popular Than London Call Girls
A correspondent from the UK sends along this picture from the Waterstones outlet in Heathrow airport: As you can see, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog is #55 on their bestseller rack, just ahead of Confessions of a London Call Girl. I’m not sure what this says about London call girls, but I’m… Continue reading Dog Physics: More Popular Than London Call Girls
Most Difficult Course?
Regular reader Johan Larson sends in a good question about academic physics: You have written about teaching various courses in modern physics, a subject that has a fearsome reputation among students for skull-busting difficulty. That suggests a broader question: what is the most difficult course at your university? Or even more broadly, how would one… Continue reading Most Difficult Course?
An Experiment in Teaching Writing: A Look Inside the Sausage Factory
As I’ve said a bazillion times already this term, I’m teaching a class that is about research and writing, with a big final paper due at the end of the term. Because iterative feedback is key to learning to write, they also have to turn in a complete rough draft, which I will mark up… Continue reading An Experiment in Teaching Writing: A Look Inside the Sausage Factory
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest Results
So, the big How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Photoshop contest concluded on Friday. We got five really good entries, and the judges (me and Kate) had a hard time reaching a decision. After long deliberation, though, we’ve come up with a solution. But first, the entries:
Upcoming Appearances: Boskone
I’ve been falling down a little in the area of shameless self-promotion, but I will be at Boskone this coming weekend, where I’ll be doing three program items: Reading: Chad Orzel (Reading), Fri 19:30 – 20:00 This will be a section from the forthcoming book, probably involving Emmy and particle physics. Or possibly William Butler… Continue reading Upcoming Appearances: Boskone
Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 04
Through a weird quirk of scheduling, I haven’t actually taught the intro modern physics course since I started writing pop-science books about modern physics. So, this week has been the first chance I’ve really had to use material I generated for the books to introduce topics in class. In the approximately chronological ordering of the… Continue reading Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 04
How to Teach Physics to Your Polish Dog
I have a Google alert set up to let me know whenever my name or the title of one of my books turns up in one of the sources they index. This is highly imperfect, sometimes missing interesting articles, and often blorting out 57 different pages on which my name appears in a sidebar link.… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Polish Dog
Reminder: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest
A quick reminder: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog (cover in the left sidebar) will be released at the end of the month. If you’d like to win a signed copy early, though, you can enter our Photoshop contest. Just edit a picture of Emmy into another picture having something to do with physics.… Continue reading Reminder: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Photoshop Contest
The Best of All Possible (Football) Universes
Proving that you can find physics in everything, Sean Carroll points to a strange anomaly in the Super Bowl coin toss: the NFC has won 14 coin tosses in a row. The odds of this happening seem to be vanishingly small, making this a 3.8-sigma effect, almost enough to claim the detection of a new… Continue reading The Best of All Possible (Football) Universes