Over in Scientopia, SciCurious has a nice post about suffering from Impostor Syndrome, the feeling that everyone else is smarter than you are, and you will soon be exposed as a total fraud. Which is nonsense, of course, but something that almost every scientist suffers at some point. The post ends on a more upbeat… Continue reading Impostors, Underdogs, and the Status of Science
Category: Science
Two Women-in-Science Notes
Two things I was forwarded or pointed toward this week, that interact a little oddly. First chronologically is from the New York Times, which has a story about how Harvey Mudd College has boosted the number of female computer science majors, by committing serious resources to reforming the intro course (which is required of all… Continue reading Two Women-in-Science Notes
Poll: Most Important Part of Physics?
Over in Twitterland, we have a question from WillyB: If you had to pick one topic to cover in Physics, which do you think is the most important for the gen. public? This sounds like a job for the Internet! To the polling machine! If you had to pick one topic to cover in Physics,… Continue reading Poll: Most Important Part of Physics?
Assyrian Books and Quote Chasing
While reading bits of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Space Chronicles yesterday, I ran across this quote, attributed to “an Assyrian clay tablet from 2800 BC”: Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents;… Continue reading Assyrian Books and Quote Chasing
A Confusing Light OPERA: How Does a Loose Fiber Optic Cable Cause a Signal Delay?
So, the infamous OPERA result for neutrino speeds seems to be conclusively disproven, traced to a problem with a timing signal. Matt Strassler has a very nice explanation of the test that shows that the whole thing can almost certainly be traced to a timing error that cropped up in 2008. This problem is generally… Continue reading A Confusing Light OPERA: How Does a Loose Fiber Optic Cable Cause a Signal Delay?
Tell My Dog What She Got Wrong: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Errata
In comments to yesterday’s post, Andrew G asked: Speaking of writing, is there an errata list somewhere for “How to teach relativity to your dog“? No, but there probably should be. I believe there’s an error in one of Maxwell’s equations (an incorrect sign, though you should’ve seen the first typeset version…), but given the… Continue reading Tell My Dog What She Got Wrong: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Errata
It Figures: The Historical Aesthetics of Scientific Publishing
Steve Hsu has a post comparing his hand-drawn diagrams to computer-generated ones that a journal asked for instead: He’s got a pretty decent case that the hand-drawn versions are better. Though a bit more work with the graphics software could make the computer ones better. This reminded me, though, of something I’ve always found interesting… Continue reading It Figures: The Historical Aesthetics of Scientific Publishing
Query for Non-Physicists: Initial Reactions
I was thinking about attitudes toward physics the other day, and realized that whenever I meet somebody (not a physicist) for the first time and tell them that I’m a physicist, their initial responses most frequently fall into one of three general categories: “You must be really smart.” “I hated that when I took it… Continue reading Query for Non-Physicists: Initial Reactions
The Story of the Three Giant Hippopotamuses
Once upon a time, there were three giant hippopotamuses… No, Daddy, it was three little pigs. This is a completely different story, honey. Once upon a time, there were three giant hippopotamuses, who lived together in a river in Africa. They lived in a house. Well, hippos spend most of their time in the water,… Continue reading The Story of the Three Giant Hippopotamuses
Quantum Musical Interlude
The title says it all: an animated video of Heisenberg singing about the Uncertainty Principle: So, you know, there’s that. It’s pretty good, but he’s no Feynman: