Now on ScienceBlogs: The Galaxy's Biggest Valentine
An exploration of physics and the quest to understand our world.
Matt Springer is a graduate student of physics at Texas A&M university. He is also an occasional writer and tinkerer, and he is probably too curious for his own good.
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November 30, 2009
Category: Sunday Function
Just a quick one today, as I get caught back up from Thanksgiving. We all know and love the very basic quadratic function. Any second-order polynomial will give you a nice little parabola, which of course is ubiquitous in physics....
Posted by Matt Springer at 12:21 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 27, 2009
Yesterday, as expected, severe underdog Texas A&M lost to #3 ranked Texas. Not as expected, the game was competitive right to the end, with an upset being threatened down to the final minutes. It was a great game to watch,...
Posted by Matt Springer at 11:12 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 26, 2009
Category: Worked Problems
First of all, happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you spend the day happily with the people you care about, and remember to spend a moment or two reflecting on the things for which you're thankful this year. Now on with...
Posted by Matt Springer at 10:00 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 25, 2009
A quick and simple way to roughly check the calibration of a spectrometer is to point it at the ceiling. Fluorescent lights put out a particular spectrum, and by comparing the colors the spectrometer senses to the colors you know...
Posted by Matt Springer at 1:06 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 23, 2009
Category: Sunday Function
In math as in life, we like to pretend that the things we encounter are well-behaved and play by the rules to which we're accustomed.
Posted by Matt Springer at 1:07 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 20, 2009
Around ScienceBlogs, people who don't accept global warming as a real phenomena tend to get called denialists. In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I'm not a denialist but rather a global warming defeatist. Doesn't matter how...
Posted by Matt Springer at 1:36 PM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 19, 2009
Ok, see counselor Troi firing her phaser? You see this kind of thing all the time on film in scifi. Whether it's Star Trek, Star Wars, or pretty much anything else, energy beams fired from future weapons are visible. Usually...
Posted by Matt Springer at 4:15 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 18, 2009
There's a little bit of buzz burbling around over Al Gore's scientific goof during a Conan O'Brien interview. Discussing geothermal energy, he said the following: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy --...
Posted by Matt Springer at 4:33 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 15, 2009
Category: Sunday Function
We're doing two functions today. If I'm not mistaken we've done each of them separately, but there's a famous and interesting relationship between the two that's always interesting to look at. Like very many interesting mathematical facts, it has to...
Posted by Matt Springer at 5:49 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 13, 2009
Whew! Interesting day around here yesterday, no? There's more controversial topics out there: abortion, health care, gay marriage, Iraq, and a few others. But not many. It's good for sparking discussion, but I also know that some large (probably majority!)...
Posted by Matt Springer at 12:25 PM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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