Not a whole lot new, but it’s been a few days. Also, it’s a challenge to remain ambulatory at the moment, thanks to this cursed cold, so I’m not really prepared to turn out Significant Blogging. — This morning’s vanity search (why yes, I am searching for “How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” on… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Category: Science
Controlling Light With Light
“Slow light” is in the news again. The popular descriptions of the process usually leave a lot to be desired, so let’s see if we can’t do a slightly better job of explaining what’s going on. The key idea is using one light beam to control the transmission of another. Let’s say you have a… Continue reading Controlling Light With Light
A Statement of Fact Cannot Be Unconscionable
Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean’s been taking a beating over his negative comments on an atheist anti-Christmas sign. There’s no small irony in this, given that Sean is a vocal atheist. His sentiments, which basically boil down to “it’s good to promote atheism, but there’s no need to be a dick about it” strike me… Continue reading A Statement of Fact Cannot Be Unconscionable
A Stainless Steel Baby Bottle
Let’s say you have some liquid that you want to contain without leaks, say, milk for a baby. What do you do? Well, you put it in something like a baby bottle, the components of which are shown here: You have a hard plastic bottle, a soft silicone nipple, and a hard plastic ring that… Continue reading A Stainless Steel Baby Bottle
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Today is the first day of classes, and to celebrate, I’ve come down with the Martian death virus that Kate and SteelyKid have had the last few weeks. Joy. This calls for a How to Teach Physics to Your Dog update, to distract myself from the cotton balls and vacuum pump oil that have apparently… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Finding Patterns in Data: Fourier Series
Over at Faraday’s Cage, Cherish has a very nice post on Fourier series, following on an earlier post on Fourier transforms in the Transformers movie. She gives a nice definition of the process in the earlier post: A Fourier Transform takes a signal and looks at the waves and then shows us the frequencies of… Continue reading Finding Patterns in Data: Fourier Series
How to Teach Psychics Physics to Your Dog
In talking to a reporter about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog on Wednesday, I learned of a mistake in the text of the book– a footnote on page 71 says that Scientific American published an article on how to make your own “quantum eraser” in April 2007, when in fact it was May… Continue reading How to Teach Psychics Physics to Your Dog
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update and Miscellany
There isn’t all that much news for a real obsessive update, so I’ll lump in a few writing-related items of possible interest to people who read books other than mine. A real obsessive update item: BradDeLong doubts my book can help his dog. How to Teach Physics to Your Dog gets four out of five… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update and Miscellany
Paying For Free Stuff Is a Solved Problem, Isn’t It?
A couple of days ago, the LHC Blog asked about the future funding of the arxiv pre-print server, currently hosted at Cornell. Cornell is looking to get some external funding, though: Currently the plan is to ask the “heaviest user institutions” (other university library systems) to voluntarily contribute to support arXiv operational costs. The FAQ… Continue reading Paying For Free Stuff Is a Solved Problem, Isn’t It?
Is Frank Wilczek Making Us Look Bad?
Today is Question Day when it comes to post topics, I guess. Over at Fine Structure, Nick asks about the effect of spotlighting brilliant scientists: I can’t help but think about the repercussions of looking at his clearly above average career as something that’s normal in physics. It’s a deterrent, I think, for all those… Continue reading Is Frank Wilczek Making Us Look Bad?