Science
Category archives for Science
Quasi Poll: Most Needed Pop-Science Biography?
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 18, 2013 
I’ve got a ton of stuff that needs to get done this week, but I don’t want the blog to be completely devoid of new content, so here’s a quasi-poll question for my wise and worldly readers: What scientist is most in need of a good popular biography? By “popular biography,” I mean things like…
Of Controversies and Clocks
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 13, 2013 
A few months back, I got a call from a writer at a physics magazine, asking for comments on a controversy within AMO physics. I read a bunch of papers, and really didn’t quite understand the problem; not so much the issue at stake, but why it was so heated. When I spoke to the…
Few-Body Systems: Cooler Than You Might Think
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 12, 2013 
Hey, dude? Yeah, what’s up? I’m not normally the one who initiates this, but I was wondering: When you were at DAMOP last week, did you see any really neat physics? Oh, sure, tons of stuff. It was a little thinner than some past meetings– a lot of the Usual Suspects didn’t make the trip–…
Affirmation Means Employment
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 11, 2013 
I saw a bunch of people yesterday tweeting approval of John Hawks’s complaint about academic timidity when it comes to blogging: The bottom line is: People need to decide if they want to be heard, or if they want to be validated. I have long been an associate editor at PLoS ONE, and once I…
The Quirks of Scientific Public Speaking
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 11, 2013 
As previously noted, I spent most of last week at the 2013 DAMOP meeting, where I listened to a whole bunch of talks. At some point, I was listening to a talk, and said “I bet this guy hasn’t given a lot of these before.” What was the give-away? The fact that he almost never…
Experiment and Theory in the Popular Imagination
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 4, 2013 A little while back, I posted about the pro-theorist bias in popular physics, and Ashutosh Jogalekar offers a long and detailed response, which of course was posted on a day when I spent six hours driving to Quebec City for a conference. Sigh. Happily, ZapperZ and Tom at Swans On Tea offer more or less…
Angry Birds, Furious Forces! by Rhett Allain
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 3, 2013 
Rhett at Dot Physics departed ScienceBlogs before NAtional Geographic fully took over, but still managed to connect with their book division for a physics text. This is part of a series they’re doing tied in with the folks from Rovio, makers of the world’s most popular smart-phone time-waster, and, as the title suggests, it uses…
Blogging Is Not Mandatory
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 31, 2013 I mentioned on Twitter that I was thinking of proposing a Science Online program item about the professionalization of blogging, throwing in a link to post from a couple months ago. That included a link to this SlideShare: Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters and How Social Media Can…
Real Scientists Have Families, Too: Photo Edition
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 28, 2013 
While we’re revisiting blog topics of the recent past, another item from this weekend’s visit to the Ithaca Sciencenter, in the form of the picture above. For those with images off, or who read via RSS and won’t see the picture, it’s a photo of one of the inspirational plaques they have lining the walls…
On Journalists and Scientists Talking
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 28, 2013 Last week’s post about communications between scientists and journalists sparked a bit of discussion, and prompted the folks at the IoP’s Physics Focus blog to ask me for a guest post advising journalists on how to talk to scientists. The post is now live, with the self-explanatory headline How Journalists Can Help the Scientists They…
