I learned today that the National Georgraphic Channel video I mentioned last week has actually already aired on the network. It was last week’s episode of the series “Naked Science,” titled Living in a Parallel Universe. I haven’t seen it, obviously, but it’s running again, tomorrow (the 26th), at 4pm (Eastern (US) time). Set your… Continue reading Dog Physics On TV: Set Your DVR
Category: Education
Lessons in Applied Data Archaeology
I’m teaching our upper-level lab course this term, where I do a two-part experiment on laser spectroscopy. The first part is to calibrate the free spectral range of a homemade Fabry-Perot interferometer, and the second part is to use that Fabry-Perot as a frequency marker to calibrate a diode laser scan across the rubidium hyperfine… Continue reading Lessons in Applied Data Archaeology
PNAS: Amy Young, Saponifier
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Amy Young, who runs her own soap-making business. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.) 1) What is your non-academic job?… Continue reading PNAS: Amy Young, Saponifier
Return of the Project for Non-Academic Science
In keeping with this week’s unofficial theme of wibbling about academia, there’s an article at The Nation about the evils of graduate school that’s prompted some discussion. Sean says more or less what I would, though maybe a little more nicely than I would. I wouldn’t bother to comment further, except this spurred Sean to… Continue reading Return of the Project for Non-Academic Science
Is College Worth It?
As I noted the other day, we’re entering graduation season, one of the two month-long periods (the other being “back to school” time in August/September) when everybody pretends to care deeply about education. Accordingly, the people at the Pew Research Center have released a new report on the opinions of the general public and college… Continue reading Is College Worth It?
Active Engagement Works: “Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class”
Physics is a notoriously difficult and unpopular subject, which is probably why there is a large and active Physics Education Research community within physics departments in the US. This normally generates a lot of material in the Physical Review Special Topics journal, but last week, a PER paper appeared in Science, which is unusual enough… Continue reading Active Engagement Works: “Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class”
The Evil Professor Magic Trick
Back when I was an undergrad, we did a lab in the junior-level quantum class that involved making a dye laser. We had a small pulsed nitrogen laser in the lab, and were given a glass cell of dye and some optics and asked to make it lase in the visible range of the spectrum.… Continue reading The Evil Professor Magic Trick
Welcome to the Information Supercollider
The title is a .signature line that somebody– Emmet O’Brien, I think, but I’m not sure– used to use on Usenet, back in the mid-to-late 90’s, when some people referred to the Internet as the “Information Superhighway.” I’ve always thought it was pretty apt, especially as I’ve moved into blogdom, where a lot of what… Continue reading Welcome to the Information Supercollider
Alternatives to Lab Reports?
An academic email list that I’m on has started a discussion of lab writing, pointing out that students in some lab classes spend more time on writing lab reports in a quasi-journal-article format format than they do taking and analyzing data. This “feels ” wrong in many ways, and the person who kicked off the… Continue reading Alternatives to Lab Reports?
Survey-Related Inadequacies
I recently participated in a survey of higher education professionals about various aspects of the job. It was very clearly designed by and aimed at scholars in the humanities and social sciences, to the point where answering questions honestly made me feel like a Bad Person. For example, there were numerous questions about teaching methods… Continue reading Survey-Related Inadequacies