Category: Science

Rotational Motion of a Bouncing Football

Still frame from the video of me bouncing a football on the deck.

I followed up my ranty-y post about “Sports Science” with an experimental investigation over at Forbes, tossing a football around on the deck out back and then doing video analysis of the bounces. This provided a wealth of data, much of it not really appropriate for over there, but good for a physics post or… Continue reading Rotational Motion of a Bouncing Football

Sports Technobabble

Over in Twitter-land, Rhett Allain drew my attention to this “Sports Science” clip from ESPN, about a wild 4th-and-25 play in the Arkansas-Ole Miss game. This is nominally because I’ve been writing about big hits and bouncing balls over at Forbes, but really, I think Rhett’s just working on a “misery loves company” theory, here:… Continue reading Sports Technobabble

Speaking at TEDxAlbany, December 3

I’ve known this for a while now, but they just announced it officially: I’ll be speaking at TEDxAlbany this year, on “The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning”: You might think that the bizarre predictions of quantum mechanics and relativity– particles that are also waves, cats that are both alive and dead, clocks that run… Continue reading Speaking at TEDxAlbany, December 3

Energy Dissipation in a Physics Toy

SteelyKid's toy Newton's cradle in mid-swing.

A little while back, I used a photo of SteelyKid’s toy Newton’s cradle as the photo of the day, with a bonus video: I mentioned that I was going to do some analysis of this at some point, but didn’t have time right then. I had a bit of time to poke at this yesterday,… Continue reading Energy Dissipation in a Physics Toy

Me in the Media: Two New Interviews

I’ve been slacking in my obligation to use this blog for self-promotion, but every now and then I remember, so here are two recent things where I was interviewed by other people: — I spoke on the phone to a reporter from Popular Mechanics who was writing a story about “radionics” and “wishing boxes,” a… Continue reading Me in the Media: Two New Interviews

Another Terrible Defense of “The Humanities”

Somebody in my social media feeds passed along a link to this interview with Berkeley professor Daniel Boyarin about “the humanities,” at NPR’s science-y blog. This is, of course, relevant to my interests, but sadly, but while it’s a short piece, it contains a lot to hate. For one thing, after the dismissive one-two of… Continue reading Another Terrible Defense of “The Humanities”

The Evolution of a Sad Balloon

Three of the four colorful Mylar balloons used in the experiment.

A few years back, I did a couple of posts on the physics of a sad balloon (that is, a helium balloon that can no longer lift itself up to the ceiling), the first on simple buoyancy, the second on how long it takes for the helium to leak out. These were based on only… Continue reading The Evolution of a Sad Balloon

042/366: Distortion

Graph paper shot with several different lenses, to look for distortion of the images.

For the 42nd installment of this photo-a-day thing, it seems appropriate to try to do some SCIENCE! to get an Answer. So, here’s a composite of a bunch of images I took yesterday in order to investigate something: OK, this needs some explanation… So, I do a lot of shooting with moderately wide-angle lenses (either… Continue reading 042/366: Distortion