Quantum physics can sometimes seem so arcane that even humans don’t need to worry about it, let alone dogs. It’s actually tremendously important to our modern world. In fact, if you’re reading this on a computer (and how else would you be getting it?), you have quantum physics to thank for it. Computers are based… Continue reading Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 3: Computers
Category: Technology
Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 2: Solar Panels
Yesterday’s reason to love quantum was the CCD sensor, which relies on the photoelectric effect to take digital pictures. Sticking with the photoelectric theme, today’s first quantum-enabled technology is the photovoltaic cell, the basis for solar panels. Photovoltaic cells convert light into electricity, essentially via the same photoelectric effect used in CCD’s. A photon of… Continue reading Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 2: Solar Panels
Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 1: Digital Cameras
I’ve been writing a bunch of publicity copy for the book the last few weeks, and one of those things is a list of reasons why every dog should know about quantum physics. I’ve been planning to chop that up into a bunch of individual blog posts in the run-up to the book, but the… Continue reading Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 1: Digital Cameras
Quantization of Books
In response to my post about Amazon sales-rank tracking, Matthew Beckler created just such a tracker: That’s the last few days’ worth of hourly rankings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, as of 10am Eastern. Enormous dork that I am, I find this really fascinating, and not just in an absolute-number sense (because,… Continue reading Quantization of Books
Monetizing Neuroses
You know, if somebody were to put together an application that would periodically check the Amazon sales rank of a given book and generate a Google Analytics style time series graph, and charge authors $5/book to see the output, I bet they’d make a bunch of money. Granted, it would put that person on the… Continue reading Monetizing Neuroses
When Men Were Men, and Physics Was Natural Philosophy
The Royal Society has launched a spiffy new site that lets you browse highlights of the last 350 years of science as published in the Philosophical Transactions (“Giving Some Accompt of the Present Understanding, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in Many Considerable Parts of the World since 1665.”). These include things like Ben Franklin’s… Continue reading When Men Were Men, and Physics Was Natural Philosophy
Spoken Like Somebody Who’s Never Read Slush
Windows is pleading to be allowed to install updates, so I’m going through closing browser tabs that I opened foolishly thinking I might write about them. In that list is yet another blog post on how electronic books will kill traditional publishing. This one is fundamentally an economic argument, claiming that it will soon be… Continue reading Spoken Like Somebody Who’s Never Read Slush
Text = Death, But Text Is Essential
The always interesting Timothy Burke has a good post about PowerPoint in classes, spinning off a student complaint. I’ve been lecturing with PowerPoint– my own slides, not something sent to me by a textbook company– since day one, so of course I have opinions on the topic. For the most part, Burke’s points on the… Continue reading Text = Death, But Text Is Essential
The Internet Is a Weird and Wonderful Place
Via somebody on a mailing list, Eric Whiteacre’s virtual choir: The post I got this from doesn’t contain any details, nor does it contain useful links to the making of this particular video, but looking around the top level of the blog it’s fairly clear that this was put together from a large number of… Continue reading The Internet Is a Weird and Wonderful Place
Poll: The Computers of the Future
Today’s Quantum Optics lecture is about quantum computing experiments, and how different types of systems stack up. Quantum computing, as you probably know if you’re reading this blog, is based on building a computer whose “bits” can not only take on “0” and “1” states, but arbitrary superpositions of “0” and “1”. Such a computer… Continue reading Poll: The Computers of the Future