Category: Video

What Is Color?

Spots from 660nm and 405nm laser pointers, partially overlapping. We perceive a new color in the overlap region, because of the way our eyes process color.

This year’s “Flame Challenge” asks scientists to explain color in terms an 11-year-old can understand. The rules limit answers to either 300 words of text or a 6-minute video. 300 words is ridiculously short, so video is clearly the way to go. Of course, I’m not much of a video expert, but then, one of… Continue reading What Is Color?

Uncertain Dots, Episode 6

This week’s episode of Uncertain Dots is, if anything, even more free-form than previous weeks, including a brief cameo from one of Rhett’s kids: Topic covered include the arrangement of faculty offices, the relative lack of demos for E&M (compared to mechanics, where there are endless videos to analyze, etc.) a little bit about science… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Episode 6

Follow the Bouncing Ball

Screen shot of the bouncing ball VPython simulation discussed in the post.

Last week, Rhett did a post on animating a bouncing ball in VPython. This was mostly making a point about the distinction between real simulation and animation, along the lines of yesterday’s post on social construction of videogame reality. But, of course, my immediate reaction was, “That’s not how a bouncing ball looks…” This is… Continue reading Follow the Bouncing Ball

Video Editing Software?

SteelyKid playing on her playset in the snow.

Both SteelyKid’s kindergarten and the snow-day day-care program that the kids go to were closed today, which kind of threw a wrench in things. But it’s also kind of fun, as I got to spend some time playing outside with SteelyKid on her play set in the snow. The “featured image” above is a cell-phone… Continue reading Video Editing Software?

Uncertain Dots, Academic Blogs

Last week, a comment I made on Twitter about the annoyance of doing merit evaluation paperwork led to some back-and-forth with Rhett Allain and the National Society of Black Physicists Twitter account about whether blogs can or should count toward academic evaluation. This seemed like a good topic for another video hangout with me and… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Academic Blogs

Physics Hangout in Need of Better Title

What with the umpteen zillion articles declaring the Death of the Blog, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing something podcast-ish for a while. Rhett Allain from Dot Physics was game, too, and suggested using Google+ to do a video hangout, so here we are talking about our classes this term: The video quality… Continue reading Physics Hangout in Need of Better Title

Charged Tape, Toy Models, and Dimensionless Parameters

The toy model of the charged-particle detection discussed in the text. Two charges start out a distance L apart, one of them is attached to a spring with spring constant k.

One of the labs we do in the introductory E&M class I’m teaching this term involves investigating charged particles with sticky tape. If you haven’t seen it before, “invisible” tape picks up an electric charge when it’s peeled off a surface quickly, and with a little care, you can create both positively and negatively charged… Continue reading Charged Tape, Toy Models, and Dimensionless Parameters