A couple of science-related items from the New York Times<\/CITE>:<\/p>\n 1) An article on the Cafe Scientifique<\/A> 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 news stries about people rejecting modernity on the grounds that it’s icky, it’s easy to forget.<\/p>\n (Again, I’ll mention that I was pleasantly surprised that twenty-odd people showed up for my “Weird Quantum Phenomena” talk, several of them taking notes, and a few sticking around afterwards to ask more questions…)<\/p>\n Mark Trodden<\/A> at Cosmic Variance<\/A> is involved with the Syracuse Cafe Scientifique<\/A>, and the things he writes about it make it sound like a fun thing. If only I had infinite free time…<\/p>\n 2) The other interesting article finds physicists studying the crucial question of why ice is slippery<\/A>. As always when more than two atoms are involved, it turns out to be a really hard problem, and nobody’s quite sure what the answer is. <\/p>\n Special bonus Top Eleven tie-in (remember to vote<\/A>: The notion that ice has an intrinsic liquid layer is not a new concept. It was first proposed by the physicist Michael Faraday in 1850 after a simple experiment: he pressed two cubes of ice against each other, and they fused together. Faraday argued that the liquid layers froze solid when they were no longer at the surface. Because the layer is so thin, however, it was hard for scientists to see. Next up: scientists consider why competetive ice skating is so freakin’ lame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in_the_news","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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