Category: Physics

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the South

One of the things I’ve been stressed about lately is next week, when I’m making a trip to the South, specifically Georgia and Alabama. As I mentioned here earlier, the original inspiration was a get-together with friends from college for the Florida-Alabama football game next Saturday, but it seems a shame to go all that… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the South

How to Teach Physics to Your Chinese Dog

Got a big box in the mail today, which included author copies of two Asian editions: the Japanese edition, which I had seen before, and this: That is, obviously, the Chinese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I say “obviously” mostly because I know that edition was about ready to roll out–… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Chinese Dog

Why I’m Skeptical About the Changing Fine-Structure Constant

Not long ago, a new preprint on the fine structure constant got a bunch of press, nicely summed up by the Knight Science Journalism Tracker last week. I meant to say something about this last week, but what with it being the first week of classes and all, I didn’t find the time. I still… Continue reading Why I’m Skeptical About the Changing Fine-Structure Constant

Relativity, Quantum, and the Internet

When Kate and I were walking Emmy last night, we were talking about the historical development of relativity. As one does, when walking the dog. I mentioned a couple of the pre-1905 attempts to explain things like the Michelson-Morley experiment, and how people like Lorentz and FitzGerald and Poincare were on the right track, but… Continue reading Relativity, Quantum, and the Internet

How to Read Scientific Papers Without Reading Every Word

Over at Tor.com, Jo Walton is surprised that people skim over boring bits of novels. While she explicitly excludes non-fiction from her discussion, this immediately made me think of Timothy Burke’s How to Read in College, which offers tips to prospective humanities and social science majors on how to most effectively skim through huge reading… Continue reading How to Read Scientific Papers Without Reading Every Word

Counterfactual Physics: Lorentz Variance?

The theory of relativity takes its name from a very simple and appealing idea: that the laws of physics should look the same to moving observers as to stationary ones. “Laws of physics” here includes Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism, which necessarily means that moving observers must see the same speed of light as… Continue reading Counterfactual Physics: Lorentz Variance?

What Uncertainty Means to Me– And You, and the Universe

In chapter 2 of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, there’s a footnote about the ubiquity of uncertainty principle analogies in the mass media: To give you an idea of the breadth of subjects in which this shows up, in June 2008, Google turned up citations of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in (among others)… Continue reading What Uncertainty Means to Me– And You, and the Universe

The ABC’s of AMO Physics

Over at Confused at a Higher Level, Melissa offers an alphabetical list of essential supplies for a condensed matter experimentalist at a small college. This is a fun idea for back-to-school time, so I’ll steal it, and offer the following alphabetical list of essentials for Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physics at a small college, kind… Continue reading The ABC’s of AMO Physics