Science
Category archives for Science
Hey, Ho, Ohio: Two Talks at Wright State, Thursday March 28
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 25, 2013 Kind of short notice, but if you’re in the appropriate bits of Ohio, you might be interested to know that I’m giving two talks at Wright State this Thursday. At 11am, I’m doing the Physics Department Colloquium in 202 Oelman Hall, “Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How…
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…
Why Should You Think Like a Scientist?
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 20, 2013 As you may or may not know, I’m currently at work on a book called How to Think Like a Scientist. This raises the fairly obvious question in the post title, namely, why should people think like scientists? What’s the point? In a sense, this is (as Ethan Zuckerman pointed out at lunch the other…
Why, SteelyKid? What Are We Going to Do Tomorrow Night?
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 19, 2013 
OK, Daddy, guess what? Here’s my idea. We get a stick of wood and we put a timer on it, then we get a big rock and put it on the end. We have to put feet on the big rock, so it can stand on the stick. Then when the rain comes down, down,…
Against Kaku-ism
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 19, 2013 I had lunch with Ethan Zuckerman yesterday, and we were talking about technology and communicating science to a mass audience, and Michio Kaku came up. Specifically, the fact that he’s prone to saying stuff that’s just flat wrong, if not batshit crazy– see this angry post from 2010 for an example. It was amusing, then,…
The Problems of Science Media Are Not Unique
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 15, 2013 On Twitter and blogs, we’re having another round of complaints about sensationalism and hype in science stories– Matthew Francis and Gabrielle Rabinowitz are the latest to cross my social media feeds. I’ve also seen some stories recently (that I’m too lazy to dig up) complaining about the latest Higgs Boson stuff, and I’m sure if…
Science Communication: The Audience Exists
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 14, 2013 
In the twelve years I’ve been at Union, there are only two times I’ve tried to go to an evening speaker and been turned away. Once was 4-5 years ago, when Maya Angelou spoke on campus, the second time was last night, when Bill Nye the Science Guy spoke. I managed to make it to…
Science Kids, Fictitious Forces, and Frictionless Surfaces
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 12, 2013 
SteelyKid has started to demand Sid the Science Kid videos, which of course we are implacably opposed to around here. One of the recent episodes available online was “Slide to the Side,” talking about friction. While this partakes a bit of the Feynman “Energy makes it go” problem, it was generally pretty good, and prompted…
Asking Questions and the “Finkbeiner Test”
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 6, 2013 There was a lot of re-sharing yesterday of an article about the “Finkbeiner Test” to be applied to profiles of women scientists. This is analogous to the “Bechdel Test” in pop culture, which asks “Do two women talk to each other about something other than a man?”, only because we’re scientists, it’s more complicated, hitting…
Science In Different Voices
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 5, 2013 
One of the things that’s been rattling around in my head since ScienceOnline back in January is the need for a greater diversity of voices in science communication generally. I don’t mean diversity in the sense of racial and gender make-up of the people doing the communication, though that would be nice, I mean a…
