It’s been a little while since I wrote up what I’ve been doing in my “Brief History of Timekeeping” class, because I was out of town, and then catching up from being out of town. Some of this material has already appeared here, though, so I can hopefully catch up a lot of stuff in… Continue reading Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 03
Category: Physics
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: Photoshop Contest
It’s now officially February, and the release date for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is only a few weeks off– the official release date is Feb. 28. Of course, I’ve got a copy already: If you would like a copy of your very own, you can either wait until the release, or take… Continue reading How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: Photoshop Contest
Thursday Eratosthenes Blogging: Measuring Latitude and Longitude with a Sundial
As I keep saying in various posts, I’m teaching a class on timekeeping this term, which has included discussion of really primitive timekeeping devices like sundials, as well as a discussion of the importance of timekeeping for navigation. To give students an idea of how this works, I arranged an experimental demonstration, coordinated with Rhett… Continue reading Thursday Eratosthenes Blogging: Measuring Latitude and Longitude with a Sundial
The Arxiv Is Not a Journal
There’s been a lot written recently about academic publishing, in the kerfuffle over the “Research Works Act”– John’s roundup should keep you in reading material for a good while. This has led some people to decide to boycott Elsevier, including Aram Harrow of the Quantum Vatican. I’m generally in favor of this, but Aram says… Continue reading The Arxiv Is Not a Journal
It’s a Real Book!
I was going to write something about the politics of scientific publishing, but instead, I want to focus on what’s really important in modern publishing: That’s right, I got a couple of early copies of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog in the mail this morning. It’s a real book, with pages and everything…… Continue reading It’s a Real Book!
A Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
The toy model of statistical entropy that I talked about the other day is the sort of thing that, were I a good computational physicist, I would’ve banged out very quickly. I’m not a good computational physicist, but by cargo-culting my way through some of the VPython examples, I managed to get something that mostly… Continue reading A Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
Simple Video Editing Software?
So, back when How to Teach Physics to Your Dog was coming out, I did a few “dramatic readings” of bits of the book, such as this one on the Quantum Zeno Effect: This was made with Windows Movie Maker, because it was free (came with the computer) and dead simple. However, Movie Maker on… Continue reading Simple Video Editing Software?
Notes Toward a Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
I’m fairly certain somebody has already done this, because it’s such an obvious idea. It’s a little beyond my cargo-cult VPython skills right at the moment, though (I can probably learn to do it, but not right now), and I none of the applets I Googled up seemed to be doing this, so I’m posting… Continue reading Notes Toward a Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
Difficult Problems in Automotive Thermodynamics
While clearing the cars of frost Thursday morning, I was reminded of a difference of opinion Kate and I have about the best approach to a cold car. I tend to start the car up, and immediately turn the defrost on full blast; she prefers to let the car warm up for a while first,… Continue reading Difficult Problems in Automotive Thermodynamics
How to Present Scientific Data
In the same basic vein as last week’s How to Read a Scientific Paper, here’s a kind of online draft of the class I’m going to give Friday on the appropriate ways to present scientific data. “Present” here meaning the more general “display in some form, be it a talk, a poster, a paper, or… Continue reading How to Present Scientific Data