This was a good week for “Chad bristles at side issues of massively reshared stories,” with the Vox and gender bias stories, and also this PBS piece urging parents to tell their kids science stories. That probably seems surprising, given what I do around here, but while I fully endorse the end of that piece,… Continue reading Stuff That Doesn’t Belong on Student Evaluations
Category: Pop Culture
Pros and Cons of Super Bowl Science
The ending of last night’s Super Bowl couldn’t’ve been more perfect as a demonstration of the point I was making about scientific thinking in football (and, you know, in that book I keep flogging…). First, on the positive side, you have New England’s Malcolm Butler making the key play: “I knew what was going to… Continue reading Pros and Cons of Super Bowl Science
Super Bowl Athletes Are Scientists At Work
I wrote up another piece about football for the Conversation, this time drawing on material from Eureka, explaining how great football players are using scientific thinking: Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman gets called a lot of things. He calls himself the greatest cornerback in the NFL (and Seattle fans tend to agree). Sportswriters and some… Continue reading Super Bowl Athletes Are Scientists At Work
Deflategate on Discovery Canada
I know I said I was done with this story, but this was actually recorded last week: The Daily Planet show on Discovery Channel in Canada contacted me last week when all this deflated-football silliness was exploding, and got a cameraman to come over and record me talking about it. The episode aired Monday night,… Continue reading Deflategate on Discovery Canada
Ain’t No Party Like a SteelyKid Party
I’ve mentioned in a few places that SteelyKid frequently comes home from school/ camp/ day care singing garbled versions of current pop hits. So for the first time since about 1990, I added a Top 40 station to my car radio presets, so I would know what she was actually trying to sing. This leads… Continue reading Ain’t No Party Like a SteelyKid Party
Deflategate: The Final Chapter
The low-level cold I’ve been nursing for a month now finally exploded into the full unpleasantness of my usual winter illness Saturday, or else I would’ve been more active following up on my Deflategate article and my ideal gas law post. As it was, for most of the day, I could barely keep on top… Continue reading Deflategate: The Final Chapter
Tom Brady and the Ideal Gas Law: Physics of Deflategate
So, as mentioned yesterday, I got an email asking me about the weird scandal involving the Patriots and underinflated footballs, so I wrote a piece for the Conversation on the subject. since a few people had beaten me to citations of the Ideal Gas Law, though, I decided to bring my own particular set of… Continue reading Tom Brady and the Ideal Gas Law: Physics of Deflategate
Football Physics and the Science of Deflate-gate
One of the cool things about working at Union is that the Communications office gets media requests looking for people to comment on current events, which sometimes get forwarded to me. Yesterday was one of those days, with a request for a scientist to comment on the bizarre sports scandal surrounding the deflated footballs used… Continue reading Football Physics and the Science of Deflate-gate
If I Were Ted Chiang…
(That title doesn’t quite scan as is, but if you stick an “a” in there, you can sing it to the tune of a song from “Fiddler on the Roof”… You’re welcome.) The last time I taught my “Brief History of Timekeeping” seminar was in 2012, so I spent a bunch of time on the… Continue reading If I Were Ted Chiang…
An Open Letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dr. Tyson: (I find the faux-familiar thing people do with “open letters” really grating, so I’m not going to presume to call you “Neil” through the following…) First of all, I should probably say “Thanks,” because I’m using some of your material in my class this term– I had them read Stick in the Mud… Continue reading An Open Letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson