I’ve done a bunch of publicity stuff for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, some of which frustratingly continue to not appear yet, but one thing from this week has gone live: a podcast interview on the Matt Lewis Show, where I talk about why and how I explain physics to the dog, and… Continue reading Dog Physics on the Radio
Category: Science
Neutrinos in the News
A little more tab clearance, here, this time a few recent stories dealing with those elusive little buggers, neutrinos. In roughly chronological order:< /p> The Daya Bay experiment in China has measured a key parameter for neutrino oscillation (arxiv paper), the phenomenon where neutrinos of one of the three observed types slowly evolve into one… Continue reading Neutrinos in the News
This Week in the Journal of Previously Solved Problems
Over at the Scholarly Kitchen, Kent Anderson complains about the uselessness of comments on journals: Comments in online scientific journals have been notoriously poor — either too much material of uneven quality or too little discussion to amount to a hill of beans. All too often, commenting has to be shut down because internecine and… Continue reading This Week in the Journal of Previously Solved Problems
Entanglement Is Not That Magic
One of the things that made me very leery of the whole Brian Cox electron business was the way that he seemed to be justifying dramatic claims through dramatic handwaving: “Moving an electron here changes the state of a very distant electron instantaneously because LOOK! THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PAPER!” On closer inspection,… Continue reading Entanglement Is Not That Magic
On the Interconnectedness of Things
I finally got a copy of Cox and Forshaw’s The Quantum Universe, and a little time to read it, in hopes that it would shed some light on the great electron state controversy. I haven’t finished the book, but I got through the relevant chapter and, well, it doesn’t, really. That is, the discussion in… Continue reading On the Interconnectedness of Things
A Musical Interlude
Yesterday was a really grueling day, and I’m home with The Pip today, so no substantive blogging. But here’s a song about the universe, written and performed by one of my colleagues: If this becomes the next LHC Rap, remember you heard it here first. By a weird coincidence, we’ve been watching our Animaniacs DVD’s… Continue reading A Musical Interlude
Experimental Particle Physics: Still Really Difficult
So, the news of the moment in high-energy physics is the latest results being reported from a conference in Europe. The major experimental collaborations are presenting their newest analyses, sifting through terabyte-size haystacks of data looking for the metaphorical needle that is the Higgs boson. And what are those results? It sort of depends on… Continue reading Experimental Particle Physics: Still Really Difficult
Calling London: Teaching Relativity to Your Dog on the Radio
The new book is out, which means it’s time for lots of promotional efforts and links to radio shows and news articles and that sort of thing. Such as this one: I’ll be talking about relativity and dog physics tomorrow night, Wednesday the 7th, on the Big Science radio program(me) at 9pm London time (in… Continue reading Calling London: Teaching Relativity to Your Dog on the Radio
A Brief History of Quantum Timekeeping
My course on the history and science of timekeeping has reached the home stretch, with students giving presentations in class for the remainder of the term. My portion of the course was wrapped up with two lectures on “quantum timkeeping,” as it were: a lecture on the development of quantum mechanics: History of Quantum Mechanics… Continue reading A Brief History of Quantum Timekeeping
How to Give a Good PowerPoint Lecture, 2012
My timekeeping course this term is a “Scholars Research Seminar,” which means it’s supposed to emphasize research and writing skills. Lots of these will include some sort of poster session at the end of the term, but I decided I preferred the idea of doing in-class oral presentations. Having assigned that, of course, I felt… Continue reading How to Give a Good PowerPoint Lecture, 2012