A number of people have commented on this LA Times op-ed by Steve Giddings about what physicists expect to come out of the Large Hadron Collider. It includes a nice list of possible particle physics discoveries plus a few things that will annoy Peter Woit, and also includes the obligatory note about spin-offs: All this… Continue reading Bell Labs vs. the LHC
Month: January 2010
Links for 2010-01-07
slacktivist: Genie in a bottle “Saudi Arabia’s laws against sorcery, it seems to me, are incompatible with its laws against heresy. The heresy laws are based on the idea that there is one and only one true religion. The sorcery laws are based on the idea that other religious beliefs may be powerfully true, but… Continue reading Links for 2010-01-07
Dorky Poll: Angular Inclinations
I forgot to include an option about this in the previous Dorky Poll, but this is one of the best ways I know to sort out righteous physicists from heathen mathematicians: How do you like your angular coordinates?(polls) Choose wisely.
Dorky Poll: Coordination
Today’s lecture in intro mechanics is a whirlwind survey of vectors. While I struggle to clear my head enough to be able to teach this stuff, here’s a Dorky Poll to pass the time: What’s your favorite three-dimensional coordinate system?(survey) This is a strictly classical subject, so please choose only one.
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Not a whole lot new, but it’s been a few days. Also, it’s a challenge to remain ambulatory at the moment, thanks to this cursed cold, so I’m not really prepared to turn out Significant Blogging. — This morning’s vanity search (why yes, I am searching for “How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” on… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Links for 2010-01-06
Owl City and the Slow Earth : Built on Facts “Does planet Earth turns slowly? It depends on how you look at it. At the equator it’s roaring along at more than 1000 miles per hour. This is pretty fast by terrestrial standards, and perhaps what Owl City had in mind. But on the other… Continue reading Links for 2010-01-06
Controlling Light With Light
“Slow light” is in the news again. The popular descriptions of the process usually leave a lot to be desired, so let’s see if we can’t do a slightly better job of explaining what’s going on. The key idea is using one light beam to control the transmission of another. Let’s say you have a… Continue reading Controlling Light With Light
A Statement of Fact Cannot Be Unconscionable
Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean’s been taking a beating over his negative comments on an atheist anti-Christmas sign. There’s no small irony in this, given that Sean is a vocal atheist. His sentiments, which basically boil down to “it’s good to promote atheism, but there’s no need to be a dick about it” strike me… Continue reading A Statement of Fact Cannot Be Unconscionable
Links for 2010-01-05
America: Too Stupid To Cook | Ruhlman.com “That one sentence crystallized the issue for me, turned my frustration from a wall into a lens. Americans are being taught that we’re too stupid to cook. That cooking is so hard we need to let other people do it for us. The messages are everywhere. Boxed cake… Continue reading Links for 2010-01-05
A Tale of Two Turbos
I spent most of Saturday in the lab, swapping out a turbopump that was starting to die. How could I tell? Well, for one thing, it made an awful noise, even more than usual for a noisy pump. But after it was stopped and unmounted from the chamber, there was a simple test: comparing the… Continue reading A Tale of Two Turbos