Now on ScienceBlogs: The Galaxy's Biggest Valentine
Thoughts on physics, politics, and pop culture, by a physics professor at a small liberal arts college, plus occasional conversations with his dog.
You've read the blog, now try the books! How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is published by Scribner, and available wherever books are sold. How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is published by Basic Books and will be available 2/28/2012, as foretold by the Maya.
"Uncertain Principles" features the miscellaneous ramblings of a physicist at a small liberal arts college. Physics, politics, pop culture, and occasional conversations with his dog.
"Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics." (anonymous student evaluation comment)
Emmy is a German Shepherd mix, and the Queen of Niskayuna. She likes treats, walks, chasing bunnies, and quantum physics.
Category: Education
On last month's post about the public innumeracy of a Florida school board member, Tom Singer posts an update, which includes a link to a follow-up at the Washington Post blog that started the whole thing. In the course of...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 9:35 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Education
Anybody who has taught introductory physics has noticed the tendency, particuarly among weaker students, to plug numbers into equations at the first opportunity, and spend the rest of the problem manipulating nine-digit decimal numbers (because, of course, you want to...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 3:46 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Advent
Moving along through our countdown to Newton's birthday, we come to the next important physical quantity, angular momentum. For some obscure reason, this gets the symbol L, and the angular momentum for a single particle about some point A is...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 10:01 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Education
"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards." -- Mark Twain In last night's post about a school board member failing 10th grade standardized tests, I may have unfairly slighted our...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 11:28 AM • 58 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Everyday
As a follow up to Wednesday's sad balloon post, the repair that lofted it back to the ceiling was a temporary reprieve, unsurprisingly. After 24 hours, more or less, it had sunk back down to the point where the ribbon...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 9:52 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Sports
I'm not much of a baseball fan, but we're edging our way toward football season, so I flipped to ESPN radio a couple of days ago, in time to hear Mike and Mike discussing Jim Thome's 600th home run. They...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 8:40 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Education
When I came up for my reappointment review three years into my professorial career, I was given a list of required materials to submit, which included a "statement of teaching philosophy." The same thing had been required for my job...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 1:16 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
A bunch of people I follow on social media were buzzing about this blog post yesterday, taking Jonah Lerher to task for "getting spun" in researching and writing this column in the Wall Street Journal about this paper on the...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 12:35 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Sports
This year's NCAA tournament is being spread over four tv networks, so that every game is shown in its entirety. Previously, you got whatever game was deemed to hold the most interest for your region of the country, plus occasional...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 11:10 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
My talk at the AAAS meeting was part of a symposium on the results from the 2008 Trends in International Math and Science Survey (TIMSS) Advanced. This is an international test on math and physics given to high-school students in...
Posted by Chad Orzel at 9:22 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
