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.
Pseudoteaching | Action-Reaction
"Pseudoteaching is something you realize you're doing after you've attempted a lesson which from the outset looks like it should result in student learning, but upon further reflection, you realize that the very lesson itself was flawed and involved minimal…
A Science Fair Project about Science Fairs | Wired Science | Wired.com
"I can't say no. People ask me to be a science fair judge. If they have good food, I am there. Of course there are problems with the science fair.
Students tend to focus on non-important things like the materials they…
I grew up in Broome County, NY, down by the PA border, and my parents still live in scenic Whitney Point. Broome County is one of the areas affected by a huge environmental controversy, because it sits on top of the northern bit of the Marcellus Shale formation, which contains huge amounts of…
My talk yesterday at AAAS went well, if too long (the person who was supposed to be flagging the time got distracted, and never gave me any indicators that I was going on, and on, and on... But that's not really what I want to post about. The thing that triggered this is the speaker giveaway from…
What Watson Can Learn From the Human Brain | Wired Science | Wired.com
"Watson won. That set of microchips will soon join the pantheon of machines that have defeated humans, from the steam-powered hammer that killed John Henry to the Deep Blue supercomputer that battled Kasparov. Predictably…
Since I had to have the slides for my AAAS talk ready well in advance, I might as well let you look at them more or less as I give the talk. So, courtesy of SlideShare, here's the presentation I'll be giving right around the time this is scheduled to post:
What Physics Knowledge Is Assessed in…
DISCOURSES OF THE DIGITAL NATIVE - Information, Communication & Society
"Teenage delegates to the Blast workshops rarely validate interest based on technological facilities, enthusiasm or competency. Instead, it is peer groups and social alignments which shape declarations and, more…
I'm leaving today for the AAAS meeting in DC, where I'll be through the weekend. The AAAS works much differently than the physics conferences I'm used to, most notably requiring speakers to upload their presentation several days ahead of time. This means that my usual night-before-a-talk process of…
News: How Class Dictates Delay - Inside Higher Ed
"A new study to be published in the upcoming issue of The Review of Higher Education examines more closely the root of the reality of who delays going to college, and why. Not only are high school graduates of lower socioeconomic status more…
Look, sir, look, sir, Mr. Knox sir!
Let's do tricks with bricks and blocks, sir!
-- Dr. Seuss
Sadly, the only trick SteelyKid has really mastered with bricks and blocks is piling them into a gigantic obstacle in the middle of the floor. Well, that, and building tall narrow towers then knocking…
We had an education talk yesterday afternoon, because today's colloquium speaker, Ann Martin from Cornell, has strong interests in that and wanted to talk to people about it. A lot of the discussion had to do with teaching students to write, and getting them to accept feedback. Martin spoke very…
Career Advice: Why We Said No - Inside Higher Ed
"My department has run a search for at least one faculty member every year for the last 10 years. I literally cannot remember how many search committees I have served on, let alone how many candidates I have interviewed. A few years ago I was the…
Sean Carroll and Brad DeLong have each recently asserted that relativity is easier to understand than quantum mechanics. Both quote Feynman saying that nobody understands quantum mechanics, but Sean gives more detail:
"Hardness" is not a property that inheres in a theory itself; it's a statement…
Did you ever want to meet one of the Calaquendi? : EphBlog
"I don't remember exactly when I first read the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, but it was at least 30 years ago. I've re-read them all (plus "Unfinished Tales" and the recently published "The Children of Hurin")…
The Prodigal Academic: Quick tips for TT interviews
"It is interview season in my fields, and we have a few searches going on here at ProdigalU (and keeping me out of trouble). I know I've blathered on about interviews here, here, and here before, but more tips can't hurt, right? Here are a few…
Doug Natelson talks about a recent presentation on education:
I recently heard a talk where a well reputed science educator (not naming names) argued that those of us teaching undergraduates need to adapt to the learning habits of "millennials". That is, these are a group of people who have…
Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
"In the July issue of APS News we pointed out that Einstein's field equations for general relativity appear unexpectedly under the opening credits of the animated feature film "The Triplets of Belleville," directed by Sylvain Chomet of France.
We asked…
I picked up a few albums off "Best of 2010" list a few weeks ago, and have been listening to them on shuffle play a lot. These included Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Which is kind of a rough one for shuffle play with SteelyKid in the house-- I keep having to skip tracks when she…
As I've mentioned in passing before, I'll be attending the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science next weekend, in order to appear on a panel about the TIMSS Advanced 2008 test. I'm an idiot, and didn't submit an abstract in time (I thought there was a perfectly…
The Literature of Ideas; or, please stop laughing at me - pornokitsch
"I can understand the temptation - and seeing how widely used the phrase has become, clearly I'm not the only one. Being "the literature of ideas" gives science fiction the authority of science. Or broadening it out - it gives…
Yemen: Protests Continue Away from International Media Eyes · Global Voices
"With the entire world watching Egypt as it celebrates the uprooting of its dictator, Yemenis are calling for help and the world's media attention.
On Twitter, the calls came loud and clear. A rally started in Sanaa, the…
The always fraught question of student course evaluations has come up again on campus. In discussions, the correlation between "expected grade" and "overall evaluation" has once again been noted-- that is, students who report expecting a higher grade are more likely to give a good overall score to…
College Inc. - Survey: Community college students prize Internet access over teachers
"More than than 70 percent of students surveyed "believe that it is important to have access to high speed Internet in order to succeed at community college," the report states. "In fact, students tend to…
Appa appears in all the weekly Toddler Blogging pictures, but he's not the only stuffed animal in Chateau Steelypips. the others were getting a little resentful of Appa's blog time, so here's the full cast of characters:
In the back row, from left to right, we have: SteelyKid, Baby, Audrey, Appa,…
Barring a major disaster, I am scheduled to teach one of our Scholars Research Seminar classes next winter. I've been kicking the idea for this around for a while, with the semi-clever title "A Brief History of Timekeeping." The idea is to talk about the different technologies people have used to…
Last night was Syracuse versus Georgetown in basketball, which is THE great historical rivalry in the Big East-- these are the teams that made the league great in the 80's, and while the Hoyas had a down stretch in the late 90's/ early 2000's, they're good again, so it's a huge game. Because of…
Beer Batter Is Better: Scientific American
"If you've ever sat down at a pub to a plate of really good fish and chips--the kind in which the fish stays tender and juicy but the crust is supercrisp--odds are that the cook used beer as the main liquid when making the batter. Beer makes such a great…
I haven't been as relentless about flogging How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (now available in paperback!) as I was last year, because it gets kind of exhausting. I do have a vanity search set up on Google Reader that points me to the occasional review-- this one, for example, so I still see the…
The "peer reviewers get worse" item in this morning's Links Dump drew an immediate comment elsewhere to the effect of "of course they do, because they start pawning reviews off on their students. This one was a surprise to me, so here's a quick poll to see if my subfield of physics is really that…
The Virtuosi: Life in the Infrared
"There's a place where TV remotes are flashlights, Wii's are torches, and Snuggies are translucent. It's our kitchen. We modified a 3 dollar webcam to view in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We'll show you how, and what you can do with it…
