Physics Blogging Round-Up: May

Much delayed, but this works out well because it'll give you something to read while we're away in Mexico on a family vacation. Here's what I wrote for Forbes in the merry month of May:

-- In Science, Probability Is More Certain Than You Think: Some thoughts on the common mistake people make in saying that science only predicts probabilities of future outcomes.

-- A "Cosmic Controversy" Is Mostly A Distraction: A lament about the neglect of science we know to be true versus more speculative stuff.

-- Why Do We Invent Historical Roots For Modern Science?: Claims of ancient origins for current ideas in science often have more to do with modern concerns than historical reality.

-- What Things Should Every Physics Major Know?: A look at the very broad topics that are truly essential for an undergraduate physics degree.

-- Science Communication Is A Two-Way Street: The calmer version of a Twitter rant about how failures in science communication can't be blamed only on scientists; the non-scientists who actively push us away also bear some responsibility.

Kind of a lot of noodle-y stuff in this month, largely because of my day job. I was team-teaching our Integrated Math and Physics class with a colleague from Math, and the class met for a couple of hours a day four days a week. It also used a book that I'd never used before, which means that even though the subject matter (introductory E&M) was familiar, it was essentially a new prep because all my notes needed to be converted to match the notation and language of the new book. That didn't leave an enormous amount of mental energy for blogging.

Traffic-wise, the physics major post was a big hit, and most of the feedback I got was positive. Many of the others were a little too inside-baseball to get read all that widely, which is a Thing.

Anyway, that's what I was blogging about not all that long ago.