“Hey, dude, whatcha doin’?” “Signing these contracts. I’m not sure why they need four copies, but they do.” “Contracts for what?” “The new book. Remmeber, the one we’ve been talking about these last few weeks? Sequel-of-sorts to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog? About relativity?” “Oh, yeah, that’s right! We’re doing another book! Where… Continue reading What to Tell Your Dog About Einstein
Category: Physics
Technical Request: Gas Cell Filling
I doubt that this will actually work, but then the Web has brought me some improbable successes before, so it’s worth a shot: I have a sealed glass cell (Pyrex, I think, if it matters) that I would like to get re-filled with a mix of rare gases– partial pressures of 100mT Ne, 30mT Ar,… Continue reading Technical Request: Gas Cell Filling
Without Experiment, There Is No Theory
A lot of people have been blogging and Twittering about this subway map of science, which puts various branches of science in the place of the lines on the London Underground map, showing connections between them. It’s a huge graphic, but a kind of cool image. I do, however, have a problem with it, which… Continue reading Without Experiment, There Is No Theory
Backyard Fluid Dynamics Revisited
Back in July, I did a post looking at how the fountain in our ornamental backyard pond shoots higher when the level of the pond drops. I set up a simple model of the process, which worked surprisingly well, but I said at the time that I really needed more data to say whether that… Continue reading Backyard Fluid Dynamics Revisited
Why So Many Blogging Astronomers?
Over in Discover-land, Razib has a couple of posts about the content of science blogs, based on an analysis of the content of the top science blogs according to Wikio. Razib’s second post is sparked by a pointed question from the author of the original study: I’m now curious to find out why there are… Continue reading Why So Many Blogging Astronomers?
Bad Universe, No Biscuit
Sunday was a really long day around Chateau Steelypips, and I couldn’t see staying awake to watch the premiere of Phil Plait’s Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel, so I’m way late in writing about it. I DVRed it, though, and watched it last night. The theme of the premiere/ pilot was killer rocks from… Continue reading Bad Universe, No Biscuit
Indirect Excitation Control: Ultrafast Quantum Gates for Single Atomic Qubits
Last week, John Baez posted a report on a seminar by Dzimitry Matsukevich on ion trap quantum information issues. In the middle of this, he writes: Once our molecular ions are cold, how can we get them into specific desired states? Use a mode locked pulsed laser to drive stimulated Raman transitions. Huh? As far… Continue reading Indirect Excitation Control: Ultrafast Quantum Gates for Single Atomic Qubits
Dorky Poll: Favorite Force?
I’m pretty sure I’ve used this topic before, but not with PollDaddy. And while I really ought to do a ResearchBlogging post today to make it a clean sweep for the week, I just don’t have the energy. So here’s a poll: what’s your favorite fundamental force? What’s your favorite fundamental force?online surveys Those of… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Favorite Force?
Measuring Gravity: Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thing
There’s a minor scandal in fundamental physics that doesn’t get talked about much, and it has to do with the very first fundamental force discovered, gravity. The scandal is the value of Newton’s gravitational constant G, which is the least well known of the fundamental constants, with a value of 6.674 28(67) x 10-11 m3… Continue reading Measuring Gravity: Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thing
Melting Simulated Insulators
The Joerg Heber post that provided one of the two papers for yesterday’s Hanbury Brown Twiss-travaganza also included a write-up of a new paper in Nature on Mott insulators, which was also written up in Physics World. Most of the experimental details are quite similar to a paper by Markus Greiner’s group I wrote up… Continue reading Melting Simulated Insulators