Physics
pontiff | May 15, 2008I'm a sucker for any game which involves time travel. If only now I could go back in time and use my time more wisely than I did by playing that silly game.
drorzel | May 15, 2008Over at Swans on Tea, Tom has a great story of his Frankenstein Moment, that moment in science when the lightning flashes, and it's immediately clear that everything just worked, and you have successfully reanimated your creation, or split the atom, or discovered high-temperature superconductivity, or whatever.
As he says, these are rare. My own career has been lacking in real, definitive laughing-maniacally-during-the-thunderclap Frankenstein Moments. It's not that I haven't had experimental successes-- I've done some things that I like to think are pretty cool-- but most of them have been…
drorzel | May 11, 2008Kate and I made a run to Babies "R" Us today, and looked at a bunch more baby stuff. We got a little punchy after a while, so it was perhaps not surprising that I was tremendously amused by the idea of Penguin Bowling.
On further reflection, though, it's really only natural. After all, the toy is really nothing more than a child's introduction to the study of physics. It's really an educational tool that captures the very essence of physics: we learn about the world we live in by throwing things at other things, and seeing what happens when they collide. Sometimes we throw photons at atoms,…
drorzel | May 8, 2008I've been grading lab reports in two different classes, and I've been struck once again by the way that students attach mystical properties to anything with a digital readout. The uncertainty used in calculations is invariably put down as half of whatever the least significant digit displayed was, even in cases where the readout visibly fluctuated during the measurement.
Even better, any experiment involving length measurements will inevitably produce lab reports suggesting that the uncertainty could've been improved if they had had a caliper with a digital readout, rather than a vernier…
drorzel | May 8, 2008The video that accompanies this PopSci.com article is pretty impressive. A bunch of college kids show off their ability to hit trick shots with ping-pong balls, bouncing them off walls, doors, floors, moving skateboards, people, and items of furniture and into beer cups. As the PopSci piece notes, there's a good deal of physics in this-- if every student put half as much effort into learning the material as these guys put into practicing trick shots, the world would be a better place.
The title of the piece, however, is "The Physics of Beer Pong," which brings us to today's non-dorky poll…
esiegel | May 7, 2008The American Association of Physics Teachers just published a study of 1,000 likely U.S. voters about science, religion, evolution, and creationism. The results are frightening. Here are some of the "highlights" of their study:
38% of Americans are in favor of the teaching of religion in public school science classrooms.
65% of Americans do not think that it is an important science goal to understand the origin and diversity of biological life on Earth.
47% of Americans believe that the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.
21% of Americans do not believe that the…
drorzel | May 5, 2008As I'm driving down the street, a squirrel darts out into the road a block or so ahead of me. From the back seat, the dog says "Gun it!!!! Hit the squirrel, hit the squirrel, hitthesquirrel!"
"Will you sit down and be quiet?" We're having some work done on the house, and I'm taking her to work with me so she's not underfoot for the contractors.
The squirrel makes it to the other side of the road, and up a tree to safety. "Awwww," says the dog. "Dude, you totally could've gotten that one. This car is way faster than a stupid squirrel."
"That may be, but I have a class to teach today. I don't…
drorzel | May 2, 2008I'm going to be busy all day (more or less) at the Steinmetz Symposium, listening to talks about the fantastic things our students have been doing with their research projects. So it's going to be a "talk among yourselves" day here at Uncertain Principles, for the most part.
It's been a little while since I ran a Dorky Poll thread, mostly because I'm running low on topics. Here's one that may be a little too esoteric, inspired by looking at the diploma on my wall:
Chemical Physics, or Physical Chemistry?
For bonus points, what's the difference between them?
Also, are there other pairs of…
drorzel | May 1, 2008One of the interesting things to come out of the switch to Matter & Interactions for our intro classes has been some discussion among my colleagues of how the books treat specific topics. A couple of people have raised concerns that the coverage of certain topics is different from the traditional presentation, in a way that isn't entirely accurate.
This is interesting to me not because it calls the books into question, but because the standard treatments of these things aren't entirely accurate, either. Both the new book and the older book are full of lies-to-children.
"Lies-to-children"…
drorzel | April 30, 2008Via Swans On Tea, an article in the Telegraph about the Greatest Experiments in Science.
Been there, done that, picked a winner. Over two years ago. Way to go, Torygraph.
OK, fine, they did all of science, while I was only looking for the greatest experiment in physics. But, really, can any of those stamp collectors hold a candle to Michelson and Morley? I didn't think so.
drorzel | April 29, 2008Via the Zeitgeist, the Templeton Foundation has asked a bunch of famous smart people "Does science make belief in God obsolete?" I wouldn't ordinarily note this, but if you scroll down a little, you'll find my thesis advisor, Bill Phillips, who offers an "Absolutely Not!":
[A] scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter. Scientific statements must be "falsifiable." That is, there must be some outcome that at least in principle could show that the statement is false. I might say, "Einstein's theory of relativity correctly describes the behavior of visible…
drorzel | April 29, 2008We had a talk yesterday at lunchtime from an alumnus who graduated with a physics degree, got a Ph.D. in Physics, did a couple of post-docs, and then decided to give academia a miss, and went to Wall Street where he's been a financial analyst for the last 12 years. He talked, mostly for the benefit of students, about his path to the world of finance, and what's involved in financial jobs.
This was terrifically interesting, and really useful. Given the way academia works, people who manage to get tenure-track faculty positions almost never have any first-hand experience of the other career…
drorzel | April 29, 2008Via Swans on Tea, a new article on the arxiv reports the possible discovery of a new stable element:
What they did was fire one thorium nucleus after another through a mass spectrometer to see how heavy each was. Thorium has an atomic number of 90 and occurs mainly in two isotopes with atomic weights of 230 and 232. All these showed up in the measurements along with a various molecular oxides and hydrides that form for technical reasons.
But something else showed up too. An element with a weight of 292 and an atomic number of around 122. That's an extraordinary claim and quite rightly the…
drorzel | April 28, 2008Today's episode of "Thrilling Tales of Physics Pedagogy" is brought to you through a comment by CCPhysicst who picks up on the implications of last week's schedule post:
You are ripping right along in that course. You do E and then B and only later get around to circuits?
Yes and no. We are ripping right along, because our insane trimester calendar demands it. We're not ripping along quite as rapidly as this might make it seem, though, because we're using a new curriculum based on Matter and Interactions by Ruth Chabay and Bruce Sherwood. It approaches topics in a somewhat idiosyncratic…
drorzel | April 26, 2008I went for a bike ride this morning, the first real bike ride of the year (I've biked to and from work a couple of times, but this was the first real ride just for the sake of riding). There was some pissy drizzle at the start, but by the time I got on the bike path headed for Lock 8, the sun came out, and it was a cool, pleasant, calm spring morning.
As I was tooling down the path, I realized that I had the bike one gear higher than I usually do on that stretch of path, but I didn't feel like I was working any harder than normal. "Gee, I guess I'm in better shape than I thought..." I said to…
drorzel | April 25, 2008Given the amount of time I've spent writing about academic issues this week, it's only fitting that the science story getting the most play is about math education. Ed Yong provides a detailed explanation, and Kenneth Chang summarizes the work in the New York Times. Here's Ed's introduction:
Except they don't really work. A new study shows that far from easily grasping mathematical concepts, students who are fed a diet of real-world problems fail to apply their knowledge to new situations. Instead, and against all expectations, they were much more likely to transfer their skills if they were…
pontiff | April 24, 2008A new entry in the best title ever competition: arXiv:0804.2162, "The secret world of shrimps: polarisation vision at its best", by Sonja Kleinlogel and Andrew G. White. Secret lives of shrimp? That sounds more like an expose on the secret drug habits of the Roloffs on the T.V. show Little People Big World, than the title for a scientific article. (Yes it is politically incorrect to call little people "shrimps." Having spent the first many years of my life being stared at for have a little person as a sister, however, I think you can cut me some slack, and just laugh :) ) Let's see if…
drorzel | April 24, 2008We had a great time on our visit to Japan last summer, but we had one incredibly frustrating experience, on our first day in Yokohama. We couldn't bring three full weeks' worth of clothing with us, so we brought a bit more than one week's worth, and planned to get things cleaned there. The hotel laundry rates were outlandish, so we loaded up a suitcase with dirty laundry, and when we got to Yokohama, we asked directions to a local laundromat (Japanese word: "ko-in ran-da-ri," or "coin laundry"). The nice lady at the hotel desk gave us a tourist map, with a route indicated on it.
This created…
esiegel | April 23, 2008Since the dawn of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. - C. M. Burns
There's no need to stop at the Sun, though. Since yesterday was Earth day, I thought it was only appropriate to spend today telling you how not only to destroy the Earth, but to effectively destroy the entire Universe. To tell you this story, we have to go all the way back to the beginning, to just before the big bang.
The big bang was when the Universe was hot, dense, full of energy, and expanding very quickly. The Universe was also spatially flat and the same temperature everywhere, and full of both matter and…
pontiff | April 22, 2008Andrew Landahl (who really should have a blog because he is certainly one of the most interesting people I get to talk to when I attend a conference) sends me a note about recent appearances of quantum computing on prime time TV which he has graciously let me post below.
I thought you'd be amused to know that quantum information has finally made it to prime time. Using TiVo, I just caught up on back-to-back episodes of CBS's "Big Bang Theory" from the past two weeks that make prominent references to quantum teleportation and Shor's algorithm. The week before last, the episode opened with a…