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Chad Orzel

Chad Orzel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College in Schenectady, NY. He blogs about physics, life in academia, ephemeral pop culture, and anything else that catches his fancy.

Posts by this author

December 9, 2015
As noted a couple of days ago, this was a big martial arts week at Chateau Steelypips, with The Pip's first-ever belt test on Monday, and SteelyKid testing for her brown belt tonight. Unfortunately, tonight was also a first, namely the first belt test she's failed. This was, sadly, entirely…
December 9, 2015
When we had our vetinary adventure back on Saturday, they drew blood for some tests. These showed that Emmy's kidney function is somewhat impaired, leading to yet more tests, and as of last night an extensive regimen of new stuff: Emmy's new medication. That's some new kidney-friendly food (in…
December 7, 2015
It's a big week in Chateau Steelypips for martial arts and cute-kid photos. On the heels of SteelyKid's first competition this past weekend, we have the Pip's first belt test tonight (and SteelyKid is testing for her brown belt Wednesday, so you should probably expect one more kid-martial-arts…
December 6, 2015
SteelyKid's taekwondo competition was the most time-consuming event of yesterday, but not the most stressful. Before we went down to Duanesburg for the tournament, Emmy gave us a bit of a scare. Emmy is not by any stretch a young dog-- she was a year old when we got her in 2003, so she's 13-- but…
December 5, 2015
I feel a little bad that I'm doing two photo-of-the-day posts in a row that are just pictures of SteelyKid, but my day today was dominated by a taekwondo tournament down in Duanesburg, SteelyKid's first actual competition. And she got second place: SteelyKid with her silver medal from today's…
December 5, 2015
Both SteelyKid's elementary school and her after-school day care had "book fairs" this week. These include a bunch of display cases full of books at various reading levels, and also a couple of tables of plastic toy crap. One of the marginally less crappy plastic toys was a marker with ink that…
December 4, 2015
So, yesterday was my big TEDxAlbany talk. I was the first speaker scheduled, probably because I gave them the title "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning," so it seemed appropriate to have me talking while people were still eating breakfast... The abstract I wrote when I did the proposal…
December 4, 2015
For obvious reasons, I don't have a photo of myself speaking at TEDxAlbany, but since that was my only real activity on Thursday, I need something to document it, so here's the stage before the show got started: The stage for TEDxAlbany. You can see the stage and the podium a bit, but I went…
December 4, 2015
The Internet was really flaky at Chateau Steelypips for the last couple of days, and I was kind of busy yesterday, so I've got a bit of a backlog of photo-of-the-day posts. This is another document-my-activities post, from a day full of talk preparation. As a change of pace from just reading the…
December 2, 2015
A longer-than-usual gap between recap posts, but thanks to some kid illnesses and the Thanksgiving holiday, not all that many new physics posts over at Forbes: -- Football Physics: Checking The Odds On Wild Bounces: A backyard experiment to see how often a bouncing football takes a big hop. Follows…
December 1, 2015
It's cold and rainy today-- you know, like it's supposed to be in December in the Northeast-- so a good day to stay inside with the camera and be randomly artsy. My desk is currently hosting a larger than usual pile of change because SteelyKid found a coin-collecting thing she got a few years ago…
December 1, 2015
I've been a little bad about self-promoting here of late, but I should definitely plug this: I'm speaking at the TEDxAlbany event this Thursday, December 3rd; I'm scheduled first, at 9:40 am. The title is "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning": You might think that the bizarre predictions of…
November 30, 2015
Not an incredibly artistic or innovative bit of photography, here, but I spent a good chunk of the day taking The Pip for his annual physical, so the only pictures I took were of SteelyKid's schoolwork: SteelyKid's second-grade assignment to imagine and illustrate a conversation with a turkey.…
November 30, 2015
We had our usual tv time on Sunday morning at my parents', with the kids alternating picking what they watched. When it came around to SteelyKid's turn, she opted for MythBusters, which wasn't available on demand, but she has several episodes on her tablet. Of course, if SteelyKid was going to…
November 29, 2015
Saturday was still warm, but grey and rainy, so we needed indoor activities. We took the kids down to the Roberson Museum to see their annual Christmas display, with lots of trees donated and decorated by local organizations, toys and games from the 50's and 60's, and a giant model train display.…
November 27, 2015
So, today, we engaged in the traditional Black Friday activity of, um, going to the park and chasing birds: SteelyKid and The Pip scaring geese with their swords at the park on the day after Thanksgiving. It was an unbelievably warm day for late November-- if you look closely, you can see that…
November 26, 2015
We're at my parents' house in Scenic Whitney Point, NY, for Thanksgiving, so of course there's only one appropriate subject for the photo of the day: Thanksgiving dinner. That's our traditional turkey dinner, from my seat at the table. We ate very, very well, as always, and the kids have been…
November 25, 2015
We're visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, and one of the highliughts of any trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa is that they have Nerf swords for the kids: SteelyKid and The Pip in their traditional Nerf sword battle. This raged for a good while before dinner. Hopefully, they'll sleep well…
November 24, 2015
I spent a good chunk of the morning across the river at the Honda dealership, because of this: The nail they pulled out of my tire this morning. That's the nail that they pulled out of my right rear tire, which had developed a slow leak late last week. It was one of those leaks that took several…
November 23, 2015
I was headed outside to take a bunch of photos with which I plan to do some SCIENCE!, but that won't be the photo of the day, because this little critter was energetically banging on the side of our house when I got outside: The woodpecker that was banging on Chateau Steelypips. I think this is…
November 23, 2015
The Pip is nute about superheros at the moment, primarily the Justice League, and particularly Batman. He's got quite the pile of toys around this theme, making for a decent photo subject: The Pip's collection of superhero toys. Technically, these aren't all Bat-Toys-- you can see a Spiderman…
November 22, 2015
I try not to have this be the cute-kid-photo-of-the-day, but really, how could I not use this shot: SteelyKid and The Pip discussing the finer points of Lego superhero stickers. The Pip was not a huge fan of the antibiotics that came with his strep-throat diagnosis, so we bought a sticker book…
November 21, 2015
For a brief, glorious moment the time change meant that I didn't need a flashlight for my weekday morning walks with Emmy. Sadly, the inexorable motion of the Earth in its orbit means that we are once again into the zone where the sun isn't above the horizon when we take our morning stroll:…
November 19, 2015
A little while back, I did a comparison of the different ISO settings on my camera, and a bunch of people commented that it would be interesting to try to match two photos at different levels. So, here's that: Trying to match two photos at the extremes of the ISO settings on my camera. These…
November 18, 2015
the Pip officially has strep throat, and thus had to stay home today, but the antibiotics he started yesterday (over his very strenuous objections) have worked wonders, so his energy level was pretty much back to normal. Which means that we spent a while out in the back yard raking up a big pile of…
November 18, 2015
As threatened yesterday, another staged shot for a "quantum is difficult" image for an upcoming talk. Some notes and caffeine. This is a piece of a homework solution that was on a pad I had lying around-- those are infinite square well wavefunctions. It's about as trivial as you can get from…
November 17, 2015
I followed up my ranty-y post about "Sports Science" with an experimental investigation over at Forbes, tossing a football around on the deck out back and then doing video analysis of the bounces. This provided a wealth of data, much of it not really appropriate for over there, but good for a…
November 17, 2015
Another talk-prep photo, because I wanted a shot to suggest the academic side of quantum physics. Of course, my actual textbooks are all in my office on campus, but then, they mostly have boring covers and titles, so they're not a great visual. So I stacked up some pop-physics books: A selection…
November 16, 2015
So, a funny story about this. I posted a snippet of a fantasy story back in August, and enough people said nice things about it that I actually got off my ass and did some playing around to format the full story as an epub. This was, of course, complicated by the fact that computers are awful, but…
November 15, 2015
It was a cool clear morning when I took Emmy out for our morning walk, with a band of high clouds running eat-west across the sky to our north. After watching a bit, I realized that these were probably entirely seeded by jet contrails, as I saw at least four planes flying along that band during the…