Consider the air around you, which is hopefully at something like “room temperature”– 290-300 K (60-80 F). That temeprature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the moving atoms and molecules making up the gas. At room temperature, the atoms and molecules in the air around you are moving at something close to the… Continue reading How to Make Slow Atoms and Molecules 1
Category: Science
Academic Language Poll: Weekly Wossname
A comment on the earlier poll asked about regular series of departmental talks, which the author called a department seminar. We have such a series of talks, bringing in roughly one outside speaker per week, but we call it a colloquium. This calls for a poll to settle the question: An academic department has a… Continue reading Academic Language Poll: Weekly Wossname
Eucatastrophe in Physics
Before leaving Austin on Friday, I had lunch with a former student who is currently a graduate student at the University of Texas, working in an experimental AMO physics lab. I got the tour before lunch– I’m a sucker for lab tours– and things were pretty quiet, as they had recently suffered a catastrophic failure… Continue reading Eucatastrophe in Physics
Academic Poll: How Do You Like Your Interviews?
The always interesting Timothy Burke has a post on the economics of conference attendance, inspired by Brian Croxall’s essay about why he didn’t attend the MLA. The key problem for both of them is that the way the academic job market is structured inn the humanities forces job seekers to attend the MLA for “screening… Continue reading Academic Poll: How Do You Like Your Interviews?
Radio DogPhysics: Cincinnati Edition
Of special interest to Ohio-type readers: I’m scheduled to do an interview tomorrow, Monday the 18th with Jim Scott of WLW AM in Cincinnati. I’m scheduled to call in at 9:50 am, which looks like it’s after the regular show hours, and thus probably a taped interview. It says LIVE in the schedule I was… Continue reading Radio DogPhysics: Cincinnati Edition
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update (US Version)
The Barnes and Noble store finder finally indicated the presence of copies in the local stores yesterday, so we made a trip down to the Colonie Center, where they had a half-dozen face out in the Physics section, and probably 15-20 on the new releases table. Woo-hoo! (Now I can shift to fretting that they’ve… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update (US Version)
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Big in the Commonwealth
A couple of nifty bits of news from the British Commonwealth: The BBC’s Magazine Monitor blog noted my Seed article. Better yet, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog makes Smriti Daniel’s list of “the best books to emerge in 2009” in the Sunday Times of Sri Lanka. The other books on the list: The… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Big in the Commonwealth
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Even when I’m on the road, I continue to be obsessed… A nice review at Lean Left that really gets Emmy’s role in the book: The dog asks clear questions and Orzel uses those interjections well. They very often serve as a way to clarify, or to bring up questions that the readers probably has,… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Miscellaneous book-related items for you to read while I spend most of the day in transit to Austin: While I have yet to see a copy in a Barnes and Noble store locally, it’s selling well enough in the national chain for them to have ordered more copies. Yay! Relatedly, the publisher has just ordered… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
The Bozo Condensate
I’m standing in the kitchen, sipping tea and watching snow blowing across the back yard. It’s cold enough that the digital thermometer has stopped working, which puts it in the single digits Fahrenheit. I’m not looking forward to walking the dog in this. “Pretty cold, dude,” she says. “Yeah,” I say. “It’s cold, all right.”… Continue reading The Bozo Condensate