In the spirit of the previous post, I thought I would provide a short list of the reasons why I am happy to be a physicist in the area of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Physics. Like nearly anyone who hung on long enough to get a Ph.D. in some field, I think the area… Continue reading What’s Interesting About AMO Physics
Month: October 2008
What’s So Interesting About Condensed Matter Physics?
If you go by physics-related stories in the mass media, you’d probably get the impression that about 90% of physicists work at the Large Hadron Collider or some other big accelerator lab. The other 10% would be dominated by people working on foundational questions in quantum mechanics– Bell tests, teleportation, quantum information processing– with a… Continue reading What’s So Interesting About Condensed Matter Physics?
Thursday Baby Blogging 100908
SteelyKid had her two-month check-up in Monday (her two-month birthday was Tuesday), and checking in with the medical profession means we’ve got the opportunity for some baby science. And it’s not science without graphs: That’s SteelyKid’s weight as a function of time. Like most babies, she dropped a bit immediately after birth, but shot right… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 100908
Literature Nobel to…. French Guy
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” I’ll be honest, I’ve got nothing on this one. Anyone who knows anything about his work, please tell me about it in comments. My… Continue reading Literature Nobel to…. French Guy
links for 2008-10-09
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2008 – Speed Read A two-minute explanation of this year’s prize. (tags: physics particles Nobel news science theory) The Collapse of Peer Review « The Scholarly Kitchen "Is peer review in decline? Glenn Ellison, an economist at MIT, is beginning to question the added value of being published in top… Continue reading links for 2008-10-09
The Kibble Bubble
A Colbert Report re-run about the financial crisis has just ended, so I turn the tv off, grab my jacket and the leash, and head out for a walk with the dog. She’s oddly pensive as we head up the street. After a little while, she stops and asks, “What was that all about?” “All… Continue reading The Kibble Bubble
DonorsChoose: Sizzling Science
As the DonorsChoose fundraiser rolls along, I’m making an effort to highlight a few worthwhile proposals from my challenge entry, in case the lack of specificity is keeping people from donating. This time out, that’s the “Sizzling Science” proposal, from Broward County, FL. This description echoes sentiments that are frequently expressed here and elsewhere in… Continue reading DonorsChoose: Sizzling Science
Chemistry Nobel for Glowing Green Stuff
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded for the discovery of green fluorescent protein. It’s split equally among three scientists, Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien (and just out of curiousity, how do they choose the order in which they list those names?). The citation just says “for the discovery and… Continue reading Chemistry Nobel for Glowing Green Stuff
links for 2008-10-08
The full story of Earth-impacting asteroid 2008 TC3 – The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society "All in all, I think the episode of 2008 TC3 has proven that the world’s astronomical community, at least, is prepared to respond when an object on a collision course is detected. Within just a few hours of… Continue reading links for 2008-10-08
Science Blogging: What Is It Good For?
I got some interesting comments on last week’s post about the science blogging bubble, and there were two in particular I wanted to highlight. Bee wrote (among other things): But what I think are further obstacle to blogging is the inappropriateness of the medium to science. E.g. blogs put by format an emphasis on novelty,… Continue reading Science Blogging: What Is It Good For?