One of our poetry contest winners has been reading his proof copy of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and posted some comments. Actually, it was posted last week, but I was at Worldcon, and not dealing with much of anything else. The comments are pretty positive, but he asks a couple of questions… Continue reading Physics for Dragons
Category: Quantum Optics
What’s Your TED Talk?
Last weekend, I was talking with Ethan Zuckerman at a party, and we talked a little bit about the TED conferences and similar things. A few days later, there was an editorial in Nature suggesting that scientists could learn a lot from TED: [P]erhaps the most critical key to success is the style of the… Continue reading What’s Your TED Talk?
Macroscopic Quantum Behavior in SeedMagazine.com
The Corporate Masters have launched a “featured blogger” program, asking individual ScienceBloggers to comment on news articles from the main site, and publishing the responses with the magazine piece. I just did one on new quantum experiments, which was posted today. The news article is Supersizing Quantum Behavior by Veronique Greenwood. My piece is Reconciling… Continue reading Macroscopic Quantum Behavior in SeedMagazine.com
Half-Assed General Education Course Idea, continued
Timothy Burke notes a controversy about an NEH program that some philosophers feel tramples their discipline. In talking about a hypothetical program that would do the same for his field of history, Burke suggests something that caught my eye: f the NEH set up a course development grant called “Time and the Past” aimed at… Continue reading Half-Assed General Education Course Idea, continued
Pop Quiz Answer
Yesterday’s Michelson Interferometer quiz was surprisingly popular– as of 8:30 pm Tuesday (when I’m writing this), just under 1500 people have voted in the poll, three and a half times as many as in the next most popular poll I’ve done. Who says there’s no audience for physics? So, what’s the right answer, you ask?
Pop Quiz: Michelson Interferometer
Inspired by one of yesterday’s easy questions, a pop quiz for you. The figure below shows a Michelson Interferometer: A laser falls on a beamsplitter, which allows half of the light to pass straight through, and reflects the other half downward. Each of those beams then hits a mirror that reflects it directly back where… Continue reading Pop Quiz: Michelson Interferometer
Entanglement by Accident
It’s been a while since we’ve had any good, solid physics content here, and I feel a little guilty about that. So here’s some high-quality (I hope) physics blogging, dealing with two recent(ish) papers from Chris Monroe’s group at the University of Maryland. The first is titled “Bell Inequality Violation with Two Remote Atomic Qubits”… Continue reading Entanglement by Accident
Quantum Switching of Light
Physics World posted a somewhat puzzling story a few days back, headlined Ultra cold atoms help share quantum information: Scientists in the US have demonstrated a novel “light-switch” in an optical fibre that could become a new tool in the communications industry. The device created by Michal Bajcsy at Harvard University and colleagues could be… Continue reading Quantum Switching of Light
Congratulations to Serge Haroche
Physics World reports on the awarding of a major French prize in science: A physicist has been awarded France’s top science prize for his work on atomic physics and quantum optics. Serge Haroche — one of the founding fathers of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) — was presented with this year’s “gold medal” by the French… Continue reading Congratulations to Serge Haroche
DAMOP Day Two
Thursday at DAMOP was a little more broken up than usual for me at one of these meetings, because the nagging cold I have was bugging me more, and also because I needed to check my email a few times. There was still some neat stuff, though. The early-morning session was the toughest call of… Continue reading DAMOP Day Two