Experiment
Category archives for Experiment
Time Is What You Measure With a Clock
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 29, 2013 
Last year, Alan Alda posed a challenge to science communicators, to explain a flame in terms that an 11-year old could understand. this drew a lot of responses, and some very good winners. This year’s contest, though still called the “Flame Challenge,” asked for an answer to the question “What Is Time?” This is a…
How Good Is My Starbucks Cup?
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 26, 2013 
It’s been a while since I’ve done a post over-analyzing some everyday situation, because I’ve been too busy to do any silly experiments. We’re on break this week, though, so I took a little time Monday to bring excessive technology to bear on the critically important scientific question: how good is my insulated Starbucks cup?…
Modern Physics and Scientific Thinking
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 21, 2013 
Yesterday’s big post on why I think people should embrace scientific thinking in a more conscious way than they do already (because my claim is that most people already use scientific thinking, they’re just not aware that they’re doing it) is clearly a kind of explanation of the reason behind my next book, but what…
Proving Bethe Wrong: On Theory Inspiring Experiment
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 18, 2013 As research for the work-in-progress, I recently read Luis Alvarez‘s autobiography, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist, which contains a passage that I was reminded of last night while reading another book, that seems like an amusing follow-up to yesterday’s rant about theory and experiment. This is from the end of the chapter where he joined…
Experiments Are Not Afterthoughts
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 17, 2013 There’s been a bunch of talk recently about a poll on quantum interpretations that showed physicists badly divided between the various interpretations– Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, etc.– a result which isn’t actually very surprising. Sean Carroll declares that the summary plot is “The Most Embarrassing Graph in Modern Physics, which I think is a bit of an…
How Do You Make Negative Temperatures, Anyway?
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 14, 2013 
Last week’s post talked about the general idea of negative temperature, with reference to this much-talked-about Science paper (which also comes in a free arxiv version from which the figures used here are taken). I didn’t go into the details of how they made a negative temperature gas, though, and as it’s both very clever…
What Does “Negative Temperature” Mean, Anyway?
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 8, 2013 The most talked-about physics paper last week was probably Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees of Freedom (that link goes to the paywalled journal; there’s also a free arxiv preprint from which the above figure is taken). It’s a catchy but easily misinterpreted title– Negative absolute temperature! Below Absolute Zero! Thermodynamics is wrong!– that obscures…
Top Physics Breakthroughs of the 13th Baktun
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 21, 2012 
We’re at that time of year where people publish lists of top stories of the year, but as many crazy people will be happy to remind you, this Friday marks the end of another calendrical period, in the Mayan calendar. So, I’m going to steal an idea from a college classmate on Facebook, who wrote:…
Using Light to Put a Mirror in the Dark: “Optomechanical Dark Mode”
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 27, 2012 
In which I unpack a cryptic paper title and explain how quantum superposition lets you use light to keep things from interacting with light. ————- I joined AAAS a couple of years ago to get a break on the registration fee for their meeting, and I’ve kept up the membership mostly because I like having…
The “Ballistic” Story
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 13, 2012 Last week, in the post about fermion conduction, I left a reference hanging: There’s nothing physically blocking the atoms from flying right through the channel– in fact, an atom that enters the channel will always exit the other side without slowing down along the way. This is termed “ballistic,” a term that will always have…
