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.
One of the things that is sometimes very frustrating (to me, at least) about popular physics books is that they rush very quickly through the physics that we already know, in order to spend time talking about wildly speculative ideas. This not only gives some of these books a very short shelf life…
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 given by:
This is probably the most deceptive equation…
"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 students. In response to a comment in which Rick Roach, the school board…
Following the basic pattern established at the start of our seasonal countdown to Newton's birthday, today's equation defines a piece that was left hanging in yesterday's post:
This is the technical definition of "work" in physics terms. It's also probably the scariest-looking equation to this…
You Khan't Ignore How Students Learn | Action-Reaction
People's reactions are not indicators of effectiveness. Pre/post testing is needed to indicate effectiveness. Ah, but perhaps there is a relationship between people's reaction and effectiveness? The research indicates otherwise. In the very…
A blog run by the Washington Post featured a post on Monday about an adult taking and failing a standardized test, who was later revealed as school board member Rick Roach:
Roach, the father of five children and grandfather of two, was a teacher, counselor and coach in Orange County for 14 years.…
It's hard to go more than a couple of days without seeing another "imminent death of publishing" article somewhere, predicting the ultimate triumph of ebooks, There's one category of books that I expect to remain safe for the foreseeable future, though, namely books that are specifically…
For the sixth day of our advent countdown to Newton's birthday, we have the first equation that really departs from the usual notation. I've gotten to kind of like the way the Matter and Interactions curriculum handles this, though, so we'll use their notation:
This is what Chabay and Sherwood…
How Doctors Die « Zócalo Public Square
It's not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don't die like the rest of us. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the…
I'm still getting back up to speed with the blog, as well as the huge backlog of stuff I've read during the past few months when I was too busy to blog. Thus, I am semi-officially proclaiming this Book Review Week. I'll post one review a day of books I was sent by publishers looking for a mention…
Moving along in our countdown to Newton's birthday, we start to deal with equations that Sir Isaac never would've seen, because they deal with more abstract quantities than he worked with. The first and in some ways most important of these is energy:
This is the full and correct expression for…
Continuing our countdown to Newton's birthday, let's acknowledge the contributions of one of his contemporaries and rivals with today's equation:
This is, of course, Hooke's Law for a spring, which he famously published in 1660:
ceiiinosssttuv
Clears everything right up, doesn't it? OK, maybe…
The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011
The year in photojournalism.
How Beer Saved the World | Watch Free Documentary Online
Did you know that beer was critical to the birth of civilization? That's right - beer. Scientists and historians line up to tell the amazing, untold story of how beer helped…
We kicked off the countdown to Newton's birthday with his second law of motion, which is almost but not quite everything you need to understand and predict the motion of objects. The missing piece is today's equation:
This is the full and correct definition of momentum, good for any speed all the…
AMNH | Master of Arts in Teaching Program
Learn to teach Earth and Space science in New York City through the Master of Arts in Teaching Urban Residency Program at the American Museum of Natural History; the first urban teacher residency program offered by a museum. *Full-time 15 month program…
Both Monday and Thursday were too hectic this week to get good family pictures. I got this one today, though, that I think is probably worth the wait:
The great thing about taking pictures of really little babies is that they sleep soundly enough for you to futz around changing lenses and…
We kicked off our countdown to Newton's birthday with his second law of motion, so the obvious next step is to go to his third law of motion:
This one was also originally in Latin, because that's how Ike liked to roll:
Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum…
Tailgating Recipes: Puff Pastry Samosas - NYTimes.com
I'm dubious, because the texture of the outside would be way different than a real samosa. But it looks relatively simple, so maybe it'd be worth a try.
The Deepening Paradox -- KarlSchroeder.com
If the Fermi Paradox is a profound question,…
It's that time of year again, when we count down the days to Isaac Newton's birthday (according to the Julian calendar, anyway), and how better to mark this than with mathematics? Thus, I'll post an equation a day until either Christmas Eve or I run out of ideas, and talk about what it means and…
The 5 Best Toys of All Time | GeekDad | Wired.com
1. Stick What's brown and sticky? A Stick. This versatile toy is a real classic -- chances are your great-great-grandparents played with one, and your kids have probably discovered it for themselves as well. It's a required ingredient for Stickball…
Yesterday's physics education post kicked off a bit of discussion in a place I can't link to about the usefulness of lectures. Something in that reminded me of an anecdote from my grad school days, that I think is useful, so I'll post it here.
When we were working on the spin-polarized collision…
Science Experiments for Unimpressed Kids: Surface Tension | Live Granades
How to Demonstrate Surface Tension This easy and fun experiment will be sure to captivate absolutely no one. Equipment Glass of water Needle A piece of toilet paper One or more kids who will be unimpressed by your experiment…
"They've traded more for cigarettes / than I've managed to express"; or, Dives, Lazarus, and Alice
"Let us consider a simple economy with three individuals. Alice is a restaurateur; she has fed herself, and has just prepared a delicious turkey dinner, at some cost in materials, fuel, and her time…
As I said last week, I recently wrapped up a term experimenting with "active learning" techniques in the two intro courses I was teaching. The diagnostic test results were a mixed bag-- one section showed really good improvement in their scores, the other was no better than the same class with…
One of the many things I wish I had had time to blog about during the just-completed term was the big New York Times article on attrition in science majors. This generated enough commentary at the time that people are probably sick of it, but I haven't seen anything that exactly matches my take, so…
This has been an exhausting and exasperating fall, but my classes are done, and my grades are in. And, more importantly, The Pip is out and about, SteelyKid is super excited to be a big sister, and everybody in Chateau Steelypips is healthy and happy. (Well, OK, Emmy's a little disgruntled that I…
A few months back, I did a post about estimating the time required for the different routes I take to work, looking at the question of whether it's better to take a shorter route with a small number of slow traffic lights, or a longer route with a bunch of stop signs. This was primarily conceived…
SteelyKid's away at Grandma and Grandpa's for a few days, to give us a little more time to acclimate to The Pip, which means you get a very traditional baby blogging picture:
It's not the greatest angle for comparing his size to Appa, but you get the idea.
The Pip is settling in nicely. His rate…
As noted in previous posts, I've been trying something radically different with this term's classes, working to minimize the time I spend lecturing, and replace it with in-class discussion and "clicker questions." I'm typing this while proctoring the final exam for the second of the two classes I'm…
Including pretty much anybody wearing a helmet in this video from UC-Davis:
That's just disgraceful, all the way around (with the possible exception of the chubby hatless cop in the first part of the video, who appears to be behaving in a more reasonable manner than his armored colleagues). I feel…
