I’ve got lab this morning, so I don’t have time for detailed physics blogging today. Happily, there’s a new edition of the physics-centered blog carnival Philosophia Naturalis posted today, which should provide plenty of physics content to get your day off to a good start.
What’s in a Name?
Today is the first day of classes, so I’m going to be kind of busy at work. Here’s a bit of pop-culture silliness to lighten things up while I’m teaching and setting up labs. The Neil Diamond chestnut “Sweet Caroline” got brought up in a back-channel discussion, prompting much revulsion from the older members of… Continue reading What’s in a Name?
Mirror, Mirror
A little bit before Christmas, I spent an afternoon swapping mirrors out of one line of the apparatus. I was losing too much of the laser light before it went into the chamber, and replacing the mirrors increased the power entering the apparatus by a factor of two or so. Here’s a picture of the… Continue reading Mirror, Mirror
Baghdad Update: That’s It For Now
As you know if you’ve been reading these occasional updates, my friend Paul has been working as a reporter in Baghdad for the last year. He’s based in Cairo, but has been spending six weeks at a stretch in Baghdad, with breaks of a week or two at home. His Iraq shift has come to… Continue reading Baghdad Update: That’s It For Now
Physics Blogging in the Media
The January issue of Physics World magazine has just hit the electronic newstands, and they’re doing a special issue on physics on the web. Among the free on-line offerings, they have a discussion of blogs and Wikipedia with various comments pro and con, and an essay about physics blogging by Sean Carroll. Oh, yeah, and… Continue reading Physics Blogging in the Media
Bring On the Paperless Office
Classes start tomorrow, so I spent some time last week filing papers and cleaning off my desk. I’ve been here just long enough to fill up the file drawers in my desk, so I went through and pulled out a few old papers: That stack is a collection of graded exams and lab reports from… Continue reading Bring On the Paperless Office
What to See in Japan?
The 2007 World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Yokohama, Japan this year, and Kate and I are going. It’s a bit of a delayed celebration for my tenure– I’ll be on sabbatical in the Fall, so I won’t need to worry about prepping a class for September, and we can make it a… Continue reading What to See in Japan?
Alternate History of Physics
Kind of an arcane philosophical point, here, so I’ll be a little surprised if anybody responds, but this occurred to me while writing the previous post, and I thought I’d throw it out there. In the previous post, I quoted Feynman’s one sentence for the future: Everything is made of atoms. and suggested as an… Continue reading Alternate History of Physics
One Sentence
Some time back, Dave Munger called me out for the one sentence challenge, originally phrased thusly: Physicist Richard Feynman once said that if all knowledge about physics was about to expire the one sentence he would tell the future is that “Everything is made of atoms”. What one sentence would you tell the future about… Continue reading One Sentence
Football Round-Up
So, remember a month or two back when everybody was whining about how Michigan got screwed out of a shot at the Mythical National Championship? They lost to USC last night. USC, you’ll recall, demonstrated their inferiority to Michigan by losing to UCLA, which is how they ended up in the Rose Bowl, rather than… Continue reading Football Round-Up