April 27, 2010
News: Science for Non-Scientists - Inside Higher Ed
"Next January, Bard's science and math faculty - along with postdoctoral students and faculty from other institutions -- will try to change all that with the Citizen Science Program, three weeks of science learning modeled on the success of…
April 26, 2010
As of 1:45 Monday, 217 people have cast votes in the Laser Smackdown poll. That's not bad, but it's currently being handily beaten by the 271 people who have voted for a favorite system of units.
The nice thing about using actual poll services for this sort of thing, though, is that I can re-post…
April 26, 2010
I'm currently enjoying the high, thin whistle of an impending deadline, so here are a couple of poll questions about infuriating behaviors to pass the time. The first is about people:
Which of these is more infuriating to read/watch/hear?online surveys
The second about presentations:
Which of…
April 26, 2010
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 163601 (2010): Direct Observation of Coherent Population Trapping in a Superconducting Artificial Atom
"The phenomenon of coherent population trapping (CPT) of an atom (or solid state "artificial atom"), and the associated effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (…
April 25, 2010
Jim Butcher's Changes, the 12th Dresden Files novel, came out not too long ago, and there's been a bunch of discussion of it in various places on the Internet. I seem to have a slightly less positive take on the book than a lot of other people, so I figured I'd put up a slightly grumpy post about…
April 25, 2010
One-third of Americans may be obese, but we're not too fat to fight. - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine
"Yet fat soldiers are sometimes given the boot for reasons that have nothing to do with their abilities in the field. According to military guidelines, even someone who's fit as a fiddle can…
April 24, 2010
slacktivist: Establishment
"Here is what the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says about religion:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."
Sometimes a comma is just a comma and not a vast chasm separating two…
April 23, 2010
In 1960, the first working laser was demonstrated, and promptly dubbed "a solution looking for a problem." In the ensuing fifty years, lasers have found lots of problems to solve, but there has been no consensus about which of the many amazing applications of lasers is the most amazing.
Now, in…
April 23, 2010
Don't ignore the Tea Party's toxic take on history. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine
"And it suddenly occurred to me that Tea Partiers really should read this pamphlet, because it would teach them something about what "tyranny" is actually like. It would teach them something about what "…
April 22, 2010
Most weeks, I try to find some natural-looking way to get SteelyKid and Appa in the picture together. Sometimes, though, there's just no way to get it done, and we have to resort to Kate holding Appa near her:
She's hugging her jacket because it got kind of cold this afternoon, but she's in a…
April 22, 2010
I wanted to test whether I can put links into PollDaddy poll items for the Laser Smackdown wrap-up tomorrow, so I needed a test poll. But, of course, if I'm going to go to the trouble, I might as well post it, so here's a dorky poll inspired by the fact that the book I'm using for Quantum Mechanics…
April 22, 2010
What's the application? Producing artificial "stars" to serve as a reference for telescopes using adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric turbulence. This allows ground-based telescopes to produce images that are as good as those from the Hubble Space Telescope.
What problem(s) is it the…
April 22, 2010
Scathing Amazon Reviewer Revealed as Author Orlando Figes' Wife - AOL News
Why didn't I try-- oh, right. Because Kate has integrity, as do I. That's why.
(tags: books literature history stupid internet)
Backreaction: It comes soon enough
"I think of the future frequently - and more often than…
April 21, 2010
What's the application? An optical frequency comb is a short-duration pulsed laser whose output can be viewed as a regularly spaced series of different frequencies. If the pulses are short enough, this can span the entire visible spectrum, giving a "comb" of colored lines on a traditional…
April 21, 2010
We Are Not Alone § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
"From illusory "canals" spied through blurry 19th century telescopes, to today's high-endurance robotic rovers, in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars is the perennial favorite target. It is, after all, the most hospitable planet we know other than our own…
April 20, 2010
What's the application? Using lasers to cut and/or cauterize tissue during surgical procedures, instead of the traditional very small very sharp knives.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can we do surgery without touching the tissues being operated on?" 2) "How can I get rid of these…
April 20, 2010
Ptahhotep
"The Instruction of Ptahhotep to his son survives in papyrus copies. It is a collection of maxims (not all are given here) dealing with human relations. The maxims do not cover all aspects of Egyptian life. For the most part, they touch on the peaceful virtues of kindness, justice,…
April 19, 2010
What's the application? The goal of laser ignition fusion experiments is to heat and compress a target to the point where the nuclei of the atoms making up the sample fuse together to form a new, heavier nucleus, releasing energy in the process. Nuclear fusion is, of course, what powers stars, and…
April 19, 2010
Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 1155 (2010): Introduction to quantum noise, measurement, and amplification
"The topic of quantum noise has become extremely timely due to the rise of quantum information physics and the resulting interchange of ideas between the condensed matter and atomic, molecular, optical-…
April 18, 2010
SteelyKid was playing with something on the floor behind my chair, so I started reading my newsfeeds. Kate was on the other side of the office, engrossed in her own computer-related program activities. After a moment or two, SteelyKid got up, and ran into the living room. Kate and I both finished…
April 18, 2010
EXCLUSIVE: The Day Einstein Died - Photo Gallery - LIFE
"Albert Einstein, the genius physicist whose theories changed our ideas of how the universe works, died 55 years ago, on April 18, 1955, of heart failure. He was 76. His funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one…
April 17, 2010
Some bonus cute for your weekend:
Here's SteelyKid apparently deciding to be a wizard. She can wave a stick and babble in what might as well be fake Latin with the best of them-- don't try to tell her she can't.
April 17, 2010
Via Kate, a call for love songs. I like most of the songs on Kate's list, but as I tried to think of songs to add, I realized a couple of things: 1) I own more really good kiss-off songs than I do traditional love songs, and 2) even the songs that I like about loving relationships tend to be a…
April 17, 2010
The Secret of L.A.'s 10-Year-Old Fake Freeway Sign - Traffic - Jalopnik
"An artist named Richard Ankrom had the same experience, and so he did what any fed-up Los Angeles driver would do: He created a simple directional tool to help drivers prepare for the 5's poorly marked hairpin exit. He…
April 16, 2010
What's the application? Holograms are images of objects that appear three-dimensional-- if you move your head as you look at a hologram, you will see the usual parallax effects, unlike a normal photograph, which is fixed. So, if your hologram includes one object that is partly behind another object…
April 16, 2010
Around 470 people voted in yesterday's optics quiz. I continue to be amazed at the power of radio button polls to bring people into the blog.
As of early Friday morning, the correct answer is solidly in he lead-- 63% of respondants have correctly replied that the image remains intact, but is half…
April 16, 2010
YouTube - Real Word Problems From My Physics Book - PH17
Amazingly, this isn't the silliest problem I've seen in an intro physics book...
(tags: education physics science silly video youtube)
Twitter / @busynessgirl/Calcwars
Newton, Leibniz, meet Twitter. Twitter, Isaac Newton and Gottfried…
April 15, 2010
The arrival of good weather has led to a good deal of yard work here at Chateau Steelypips. SteelyKid, being a sturdy and active toddler, is quite insistent that she can help with the raking:
Or, possibly, fight off demon armies with her ninja skills. It's a little hard to say. Swinging the rake…
April 15, 2010
The pace has slowed, but there are still occasional sightings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in my Google vanity searches:
It turns up on library blogs with some regularity. This particular one, from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is nice because it's not just a rewrite of the…
April 15, 2010
I was starting to type up the next Laser Smackdown entry, when it occurred to me that this was a good point to talk about a neat little thing from optics. It further occurred to me that this would be a good poll/quiz topic, to see what people think before I give you the real answer.
So, here's the…
