So, who are the people in yesterday’s poll about theoretical physicists, and why should you know them?
Category: Science
Volume Packing of Breakfast Cereal
We’re working on moving SteelyKid from formula to milk (which isn’t going all that well– dairy seems to make her gassy). This has led me to switch over to cereal in the mornings, since we’re buying milk anyway, which frees up the time otherwise spent waiting for the toaster. Cereal-wise, I tend to alternate between… Continue reading Volume Packing of Breakfast Cereal
Historical Physicist Smackdown: Electric Theory
I’m nearly done with Graham Farmelo’s biography of Dirac (honest), which discusses the major attempts to understand the behavior of electrons in quantum mechanics. this calls for a dorky poll: Which theorist of the electron was the best?(poll) Try not to base your selection on which of these historical physicists has the best biography written… Continue reading Historical Physicist Smackdown: Electric Theory
Early Review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
One of the photo caption contest winners, Nick O’Neill, has finished his galley proof, and posted an early review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Casual physics intro books are quite possibly the hardest subgenre of physics books to write. Textbooks and further upper-level reading have expectations both of what you already know… Continue reading Early Review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
Ask a Physicist’s Dog
The scheduled release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is three months from today. This is, as you most likely know, a book based on the frequent conversations Emmy and I have about physics: To mark the pre-anniversary, Emmy has decided to use social media to showcase her physics knowledge: She’s answering physics… Continue reading Ask a Physicist’s Dog
The Early Days of Quantum Engineering
Buried in the weekend links dump at the arxiv blog was Scalable ion traps for quantum information processing: We report on the design, fabrication, and preliminary testing of a 150 zone array built in a `surface-electrode’ geometry microfabricated on a single substrate. We demonstrate transport of atomic ions between legs of a `Y’-type junction and… Continue reading The Early Days of Quantum Engineering
Philosophical Poll: Chickens and Eggs, Experiment and Theory
I’m halfway through Graham Farmelo’s Dirac biography at the moment, and enjoying it quite a bit. Farmelo cites Dirac as one of the first physicists to evaluate theories on their mathematical beauty, rather than waiting for experiments. This is in stark contrast to his Cambridge colleague Rutherford, who was highly skeptical of abstract theory, and… Continue reading Philosophical Poll: Chickens and Eggs, Experiment and Theory
The Purposes and Problems of Labs
Over at Jim Henley’s place, Thoreau further justifies his status as an essential academic-physics blogger with a really good post about the problem of introductory labs: In freshman labs, generally you’re trying to measure something (at least as it’s done at many schools). The measurement is never as clean as the stuff being taught in… Continue reading The Purposes and Problems of Labs
Dorky Poll: State Manipulation
I’m teaching Quantum Optics again this term, talking about the interaction between light and matter in circumstances where you need to account for the quantum nature of one or both of those. We’re starting on the actual interactions today, albeit with a semi-classical approach (Einstein coefficients and the Fermi Golden Rule), but we’ve just finished… Continue reading Dorky Poll: State Manipulation
Dorky Poll: Halogens
We’ll keep up the chemical theme that we’ve been following lately with another Dorky Poll to pass the time while I’m in lab all morning. We’re not going to do all of the columns of the periodic table (does anybody really have a favorite transition metal?), but a couple more demand opinions. So, what’s your… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Halogens