Over at Swans on Tea, Tom has a great story of his Frankenstein Moment, that moment in science when the lightning flashes, and it’s immediately clear that everything just worked, and you have successfully reanimated your creation, or split the atom, or discovered high-temperature superconductivity, or whatever. As he says, these are rare. My own… Continue reading The Frankenstein Moment
Category: Science
NYC Trip: American Museum of Natural History
Some colleagues organized a bus trip to New York yesterday, which I went on, on the grounds that a) it was cheap, and b) in a few months, we won’t be doing much traveling at all for a while. This required me to get up at an ungodly hour to catch the bus on campus,… Continue reading NYC Trip: American Museum of Natural History
Here’s An Experiment For You…
Via Swans On Tea, I see that Comedy Central has put up the video of George Johnson’s appearance on the Colbert Report. Or, I should say, they claim to have put it up– their video player didn’t work worth a damn on my computer. I saw this on the day-late rerun, and it was hilarious.… Continue reading Here’s An Experiment For You…
Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong
The video that accompanies this PopSci.com article is pretty impressive. A bunch of college kids show off their ability to hit trick shots with ping-pong balls, bouncing them off walls, doors, floors, moving skateboards, people, and items of furniture and into beer cups. As the PopSci piece notes, there’s a good deal of physics in… Continue reading Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong
Novels of Science
Writing in Scientific American, Mark Alpert argues that we need more novels about science: A good work of fiction can convey the smells of a laboratory, the colors of a dissected heart, the anxieties of a chemist and the joys of an astronomer–all the illuminating particulars that you won’t find in a peer-reviewed article in… Continue reading Novels of Science
Relative Dog Motion
As I’m driving down the street, a squirrel darts out into the road a block or so ahead of me. From the back seat, the dog says “Gun it!!!! Hit the squirrel, hit the squirrel, hitthesquirrel!” “Will you sit down and be quiet?” We’re having some work done on the house, and I’m taking her… Continue reading Relative Dog Motion
Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences
I’m going to be busy all day (more or less) at the Steinmetz Symposium, listening to talks about the fantastic things our students have been doing with their research projects. So it’s going to be a “talk among yourselves” day here at Uncertain Principles, for the most part. It’s been a little while since I… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences
Sigma Xi Film Festival: Short Films About Water
Speaking (as we were) of pro-science film festivals, Sigma Xi (the scientific research honor society– think Phi Beta Kappa for science nerds) is announcing a student film competition: In conjunction with a year-long focus on the issue of water, Sigma Xi is sponsoring a competition for three-minute student films on aspects of this precious and… Continue reading Sigma Xi Film Festival: Short Films About Water
Film Festival Query
Having suggested an on-line pro-science film festival a little while ago, I should report that there are discussions underway (or at least in the works) about trying to make something happen. If it goes anywhere, it may look different than the original suggestion, but I’m kind of curious about one aspect of the original idea.… Continue reading Film Festival Query
Familiarity and Lies-to-Children
One of the interesting things to come out of the switch to Matter & Interactions for our intro classes has been some discussion among my colleagues of how the books treat specific topics. A couple of people have raised concerns that the coverage of certain topics is different from the traditional presentation, in a way… Continue reading Familiarity and Lies-to-Children