As the number of students taking physics who go on to major in physics is vanishingly small– something like 3% of students in introductory physics take even one more class– physics departments end up serving a number of different constituencies. There are students majoring in other sciences, future engineers, and then there are the pre-meds.… Continue reading Revenge of the Pre-Meds
True Lab Stories: The Sodium Incident
For technical reasons, it turns out that alkali metal atoms are particularly good candidates for laser cooling. Rubidium is probably the most favorable of all of them– some atomic physicists jokingly refer to it as “God’s atom”– but all of the alkalis, even Francium, have been cooled and trapped. Of course, alkali metal elements are… Continue reading True Lab Stories: The Sodium Incident
Let the Games Begin
Classes start today for our Spring trimester, which is both the home stretch, and one of the most brutal academic death marches in the business– we wind up running into June every year (last day of finals is June 7), well after most colleges are out of session. By the end of the term, the… Continue reading Let the Games Begin
All Scientists Left Behind
Orac beats me to commenting on today’s depressing New York Times story about NCLB. It seems that, faced with strict “No Child Left Behind” requirements in reading and math, some schools are shifting things around so that their low-performing students take only reading and math: Rubén Jimenez, a seventh grader whose father is a construction… Continue reading All Scientists Left Behind
21.9 +/- 3.1%
Since you asked. Uncertainty is due to the answer to #7.
Pay No Attention to the Game Behind the Curtain
Just a quick note: When I talked earlier about the aesthetic superiority of college basketball, I wasn’t thinking of last night’s Memphis-UCLA game. Ye gods, what an ugly display. That set basketball back so far they should’ve replaced the rims with peach baskets at halftime. I think Memphis coach/ huckster John Calipari said it best:… Continue reading Pay No Attention to the Game Behind the Curtain
Commiseration or Schadenfreude?
In the New York Times newsfeed this morning, we have: First Rocket Is Lost by Space Company A private venture hailed as the beginning of a new age of cheap and reliable access to space suffered a setback yesterday when its first rocket was lost over the Pacific Ocean about a minute after liftoff. The… Continue reading Commiseration or Schadenfreude?
Notes Toward a User’s Guide to Synthetic Chemistry Talks
Reading Dylan Stiles’s blog yesterday reminded me of a post I wrote last summer about how to approach student talks about synthetic chemistry. Since evil spammers have forced us to turn off comments to the old site, I’ll reproduce the original below the fold:
Gravitomagnetic Noise
A reader emails to ask if I can make sense of this announcement from the European Space Agency: Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity… Continue reading Gravitomagnetic Noise
Random Ten
My iPod apparently decided that I needed some slightly trippy stuff to go with the Flexeril and Darvocet I’ve been taking for my shoulder: “Fight Test,” the Flaming Lips “Late in the Evening,” Paul Simon “Just Like Honey,” the Jesus & Mary Chain “Sunshine/ Nowhere to Run,” Ride “See a Little Light,” Bob Mould “Whole… Continue reading Random Ten