Back during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised to do a re-enactment of the Bohr-Einstein debates using puppets if you contributed enough to claim $2,000 of the Hewlett-Packard contribution to the Social Media Challenge. I obviously aimed too low, because the final take was $4064.70, more than twice the threshold for a puppet show. So, I… Continue reading The Bohr-Einstein Debates, With Puppets
Category: Science
When Men Were Men, and Physics Was Natural Philosophy
The Royal Society has launched a spiffy new site that lets you browse highlights of the last 350 years of science as published in the Philosophical Transactions (“Giving Some Accompt of the Present Understanding, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in Many Considerable Parts of the World since 1665.”). These include things like Ben Franklin’s… Continue reading When Men Were Men, and Physics Was Natural Philosophy
Hail to the Geek
Via Chris Mooney, a Seth Borenstein article about Obama’s love for science: Out in public, Obama turns the Bunsen burner up a notch, playing a combination of high school science teacher and math team cheerleader. Last week, for example, the president announced that the White House would hold an annual science fair as part of… Continue reading Hail to the Geek
More Early Reviews of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is three weeks from tomorrow, but a couple of new reviews have been posted, one linkable, the other not so much. The linkable one is from one of our contest winners, Eric Goebelbecker, at Dog Spelled Forward (an excellent name for a dog-related… Continue reading More Early Reviews of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
Science: Notable at Last
The New York Times list of “Notable Books for 2009” has been released, which means it’s time for my annual rant about how they’ve slighted science books. So, how did they do this year? Here are the science books on this year’s list: The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn By LOUISA GILDER… Continue reading Science: Notable at Last
51 Best Physics Blogs
A few other people got the same email I did, promoting a list of the 50 Best Physics Blogs put together by Accredited Online Colleges Dot Org. It’s a fine list, with one glaring problem: They didn’t include Matt Springer’s Built On Facts. As you can probably tell from its frequent tagging for the daily… Continue reading 51 Best Physics Blogs
Science Ahead of Its Time?
Thony C has a post about the Great Man theory of science spinning off some thoughts about Darwin by ex-ScienceBlogs silverback John Wilkins. As Thony writes: Now you may ask why I as a historian of Renaissance mathematics should comment on a blog post about a 19th century work of biology and its author? The… Continue reading Science Ahead of Its Time?
Tenure: Threat, Menace, or Market Failure?
I’ve been a little too busy to participate, but His Holiness and Eric Weinstein on Twitter have gotten into an interesting exchange about the structure of academia, and the appropriate number of Ph.D.’s in science. As usual, I suspect I’m not fully understanding the majesty of whatever Eric is arguing in favor of, but it’s… Continue reading Tenure: Threat, Menace, or Market Failure?
Dorky Poll: How Do You Say That?
As every physics-loving dog knows, the idea that electrons behave like waves was first suggested by Loius Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie (the 7th duc de Broglie) in 1923. The proper pronunciation of his surname is a mystery even to human physicists, though. So, how would you say it? Louis Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie’s… Continue reading Dorky Poll: How Do You Say That?
Physics Is Going to the Dogs
There’s been an independent rediscovery of the notion of using dogs to explain physics, as you can see in this YouTube video of Golden Retrievers explaining the structure of atoms: Emmy thinks she should get royalties, in the form of cheese. But then, she thinks that about everything…