A couple of technical notes that may affect your reading and commenting experience: 1) The site developer has tweaked the RSS feeds to include links to the full post, and to the comments section. The comments links on some posts even appear to give a comment tally, which is pretty cool. Of course, implementing this… Continue reading Blog Tweaking
Algebraic Intervention
I really don’t mean to turn the whole blog over to all algebra, all the time, but Richard Cohen’s idiocy has proved to be a good jumping-off point for a lot of interesting discussions (and a surprising number of comments, links, and TrackBacks…). The other ScienceBlogs comment on the whole thing that I’d like to… Continue reading Algebraic Intervention
NYT Notes
A couple of science-related items from the New York Times: 1) An article on the Cafe Scientifique phenomenon, in which scientists put on monthly get-togethers for the general public, where recent scientific research is explained in layman’s terms. It’s nice to be reminded that there’s still interest in learning about science– given the numbe of… Continue reading NYT Notes
Algebra and Storytelling
(It’s Presidents’ Day, so remember to vote!) Razib over at Gene Expression offers some thoughts on the algebra issue, in which he suggests some historical perspective: The ancient Greeks were not unintelligent, so the fact that many of us (rightly I believe) take symbolic algebra for granted as a necessary feature of our cognitive landscape… Continue reading Algebra and Storytelling
Top Eleven: Early Returns
A preliminary report on the standings in the Greatest Physics Experiment voting: Michelson-Morley: 13 Faraday: 7 (including one vote in the Farady post) Roemer: 5 Aspect: 4.5 (one indecisive person voted for both Cavendish and Aspect) Galileo: 3 Rutherford: 3 Cavendish: 1.5 Hertz: 1 (in the comments to the Hertz post) Newton, Hubble, and Mössbauer… Continue reading Top Eleven: Early Returns
Technical Issues
We’re back after a fun weekend at Boskone– my various panels went well, and I got to meet, talk to, and hang out with some terrifically interesting people. I think the “Weird Quantum Phenomena” talk went rather well (it was scheduled as a half-hour talk, but there was nothing else scheduled for the room, so… Continue reading Technical Issues
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
Another reminder that Republicans don’t have a monopoly on offensive anti-science stupidity, from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who declares algebra useless in a column directed at a high-school drop-out. If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your… Continue reading Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
Top Eleven: Time to Vote!
The Top Eleven is now complete. Here’s the full list of experiments, with links to my summaries: Galileo Galilei: ~1610: Discovery of the moons of Jupiter, and measurements of the acceleration of falling objects. Ole Roemer ~1675: Measurement of the speed of light by timing the eclipses of Io. Isaac Newton ~1700: Dispersion of light… Continue reading Top Eleven: Time to Vote!
One, Two, Many, Lots…
Union College Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Feb. 16, 2006 Speaker: Dr. Chad Orzel, Union College Title: “Counting Atoms for Astrophysics: Atom Traps, Neutrino Detectors, and Radioactive Background Measurements” Abstract: A new generation of neutrino and dark matter detectors is currently under development, using liquid neon or xenon as a detection medium. These detectors offer unprecedented… Continue reading One, Two, Many, Lots…
Top Eleven: Alain Aspect
The final and most recent of the Top Eleven is an experiment that goes right to the heart of the weirdness inherent in quantum mechanics. Who: Alain Aspect (1947-present), a French physicist. (Again, Wikipedia is a let-down, but CNRS has useful information.) When: Around 1982 (there are several experiments involved, but the 1982 one is… Continue reading Top Eleven: Alain Aspect