It’s been a brutally busy couple of weeks here, what with reading folders for the job searches we have going on, trying to keep on top of my class, and multiple day-care closings for the Jewish holidays. But the kids are still very cute, as you can see from the above caricatures of The Pip… Continue reading Cute Kids Weekend
Author: Chad Orzel
John Stewart Bell Prize: Nominations Wanted
In odd-numbered years (by the Gregorian calendar, anyway), the University of Toronto offers the John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Their Applications. This is not connected to the Jon Stewart of the Daily Show– he’s purely classical, as you can tell from the fact that there’s no “h”… Continue reading John Stewart Bell Prize: Nominations Wanted
Entangled States at TED-Ed
The fourth video I wrote for TED-Ed is now live: Einstein’s Brilliant Mistake: Entangled States. The title is not just an Elvis Costello reference, but gets at the fact that while the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen paper was wrong in that the local hidden variable theories they favored are impossible, it turned out to be… Continue reading Entangled States at TED-Ed
The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf
I enjoyed Caleb Scharf’s previous book, Gravity’s Engines a good deal, so I was happy to get email from a publicist offering me his latest. I’m a little afraid that my extreme distraction of late hasn’t really treated it fairly, but then again, the fact that I finished it at all in my current state… Continue reading The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf
Schrödinger’s Cat at TED-Ed
The third of the videos I wrote for TED-Ed is now live: Schrödinger’s Cat: A Thought Experiment in Quantum Mechanics.This is using basically the same argument I outlined in this post, but with awesome animation courtesy of Agota Vegso. I’m impressed by how close the images that ended up in the video are to the… Continue reading Schrödinger’s Cat at TED-Ed
Relativity and Baseball
It’s baseball playoff time, so sport shows are full of one of the great mysteries of the season, exemplified by this .gif (from SBNation): No, not “Raul Ibanez, really?” but “How can he make the ball go that far?” After all, even very good outfielders are lucky to reach home plate with a throw from… Continue reading Relativity and Baseball
One Does Not Simply Science Into Mordor
I recently shot a bunch of video of myself in front of a green screen, for something that will be revealed in due time. Of course, if you have green-screen footage of yourself, you’re pretty much obliged to do something silly with it, so here’s a quick GIMP-ing of a still from the video (also… Continue reading One Does Not Simply Science Into Mordor
Uncertain Dots 24
If you like arbitrary numerical signifiers, this is the point where we can start to talk about plural dozens of Uncertain Dots hangouts. As usual, Rhett and I chat about a wide range of stuff, including the way we always say we’re going to recruit a guest to join us, and then forget to do… Continue reading Uncertain Dots 24
Nobel Prize for Blue LEDs
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for the development of blue LED’s. As always, this is kind of fascinating to watch evolve in the social media sphere, because as a genuinely unexpected big science story, journalists don’t have pre-written articles based on an early… Continue reading Nobel Prize for Blue LEDs
Nobel Season 2014
With this morning’s announcement of the 2014 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, the annual Nobel season is upon us. I didn’t do a betting pool post this year, because when I announced last year’s winner, I was reminded that I had never paid off the prize to the previous year’s winner. So I think… Continue reading Nobel Season 2014