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.
SteelyKid's second-grade class is doing a "Zoom Time" thing where the kids make short presentations to the class about one of their interests. It's basically an expanded show-and-tell, with fifteen minutes for talking, and five for "questions and compliments."
She, of course, decided to talk about…
You didn't get a photo of the day yesterday because this was my day:
Southern California at sunrise, from the air.
I spent about seven hours on planes, starting before the sun was up in California, to say nothing of the time spent in airports. I had the good camera with me, so I got some cool…
As noted yesterday, I'm visiting my sister for a few days, since I was on the West Coast anyway. Being here in Southern California, it seems appropriate to jack Kevin Drum's style and do some cat-blogging, and luckily enough, my sister is the Cat Person in the family. So, here they are:
My sister'…
Having successfully given two talks in Sacramento, I'm spending a few days visiting my sister in Riverside, CA, because it's not often I'm on the West Coast at all. She had to work this morning, so I went on a bit of a hike up and down Mt. Rubidoux, where the city has built a really nice paved…
Having a slow morning here in Sacramento, because yesterday started before 4am and ended after 1am, according to my internal clock. This provided the opportunity to take some nicer pictures than just the obligatory hotel-window shot, so I went for a walk on the bike path by the American River.…
I'm in California for a few days, to give a couple of talks in Sacramento. I'm told that it's traditional to commemorate such travel by taking a photo of a hotel parking lot, so here you go:
The obligatory hotel parking lot photo.
There are, in fact, palm trees around here, just not any that are…
When we were in DC back in July, SteelyKid purchased a toy Newton's cradle. And I already owned a 1000fps video camera, so it was inevitable that the one would end up in front of the other...
I spent a while this afternoon making high-speed video of the toy clicking back and forth, but didn't have…
We've had a serious cold snap over the last few days, with temperatures dropping from the 60F kind of range down to 40F. And with that comes, well:
Frost on the windshield of my car.
Happily, it's going to warm back up over the next couple of days, but it won't be long before I need to extend…
A few years back, I did a couple of posts on the physics of a sad balloon (that is, a helium balloon that can no longer lift itself up to the ceiling), the first on simple buoyancy, the second on how long it takes for the helium to leak out. These were based on only a couple of data points, though…
It's been a while since I did it, but on a few occasions in the past, I've done posts here titled "Who Are You People?" asking readers to comment and say something about themselves. This is not remotely scientific, as a survey of blog readership, though.
Happily, an actual scientist is stepping up…
Every Sunday, I take the kids down to the Schenectady Greenmarket, which from May-October is held outdoors, on the streets around City Hall. This puts it right next to our local independent bookstore, The Open Door, which is kind of popular with the kids:
SteelyKid and The Pip running into our…
Another Saturday full of kid stuff, chiefly a rather brisk soccer game-- around 45F at game time, with a stiff breeze. It was interesting to see how different kids reacted to the cold. One or two got hyper, and ran around crazily to stay warm, while some others just disengaged from the game. And a…
It was kind of an annoying week in a number of respects, which called for something frivolous and morale-bosting. Thus, this:
Dr. Brown is horrified to discover who's been funding Dr. Red's research on the Philosopher's Stone.
The shiny rocks are from a collection of "Gold and Diamonds" (i.e.…
In addition to a bunch of work-related stuff, I'm trying to devote some time during my sabbatical to fixing various problems that have piled up around Chateau Steelypips over the last few years when I was too busy to deal with much of anything. Thus, today's photo is this fairly unremarkable shot…
One side effect of this photo-a-day business that I probably should've anticipated is that I spend a lot of time now looking at stuff and saying "That's make a good photo..." Which is annoying when I'm out and don't have the camera with me, so I've started throwing it in the car when I go out to…
I'm helping coach SteelyKid's soccer practice tonight, but that's no problem for the photo-of-the-day blog, as I got that out of the way early:
Scene from this morning's walk with Emmy.
This is what it looks like when Emmy and I go for our morning stroll these days, a little after 6am. Which is…
For the 42nd installment of this photo-a-day thing, it seems appropriate to try to do some SCIENCE! to get an Answer. So, here's a composite of a bunch of images I took yesterday in order to investigate something:
Graph paper shot with several different lenses, to look for distortion of the images…
'Tis the season when things get all colorful:
Colorful leaves on a tree in the front yard of Chateau Steelypips.
Not much to say other than that, really. This is the tree next to our driveway, shot with the 50mm f/1.8 lens. I spent a while shuffling around underneath the tree finding just the…
Rhett is off at some sort of football game, but don't worry, I'll step up to make sure the Internet has pictures of kids playing soccer:
SteelyKid in action at rec soccer.
I'm assistant coaching the team (and the only coach for every other game), which makes it hard to get photos of SteelyKid,…
Friday was yet another heavy kid-wrangling day, as the Pip had a minor surgical procedure in the early morning, which required general anaesthesia. This was done before 9am, but we had to keep him home from school for the day to watch for ill effects. Of which there were none, so he and I went out…
Another couple of weeks of science-y blogging at Forbes:
-- Football Physics: Deflategate Illustrates Key Concepts: In which I use the ever-popular silly scandal over deflated footballs as an excuse to talk about three-body recombination.
-- The Annoying Physics Of Air Resistance: Air resistance is…
In yesterday's crude astrophotography post, I mentioned that the conjunction of Venus and the Moon would be closer this morning, but I took a shot of it yesterday because there's no telling with the weather here this time of year. When I first went outside this morning, though, the sky was…
One of the few problems with the new camera is that the Canon software that talks to it only runs on my laptop, not my home desktop. This is an issue partly because the laptop has less disk space (I got it with the biggest SSD available a few years ago, which is small compared to the spinny-disk…
The difficult-to-spell name "Schenectady" (where Union is located) derives from a Mohawk word meaning "beyond the pines." The pines in question are an extensive region of pine barrens between Albany and Schenectady, a small bit of which survives as the Albany Pine Bush Nature Preserve. They've got…
Another fall day, another holiday closing at the JCC. I was home with The Pip for most of the day, which was the usual mix of fun, exhausting, and puzzling. For example, while I offered several times to go out to a playground before lunch, he refused. But then insisted that we walk to the store to…
A big chunk of Sunday was lost to a wretched cold-- despite a two-hour afternoon nap, I was asleep by 10pm-- but I did get the camera out for a bit while doing some late-season grilling:
Pork chops on the grill.
Not the most amazing photo, I know (though it does take deliberate work to get those…
Saturdays are the busiest days around Chateau Steelypips, with both SteelyKid and The Pip having soccer in the morning (in two different places), then lunch, then some sort of activity for the afternoon. Yesterday, this was a party for one of SteelyKid's friends. And last night, there was a Movie…
Took the camera along this afternoon when I took Emmy for a walk (Kate and I are going to see The Martian tonight, so Emmy got an early dinner and stroll), and took pictures of a bunch of random stuff in a little park near our house. Including these two pictures pasted together into one:
Two tree…
It's October 1, aka "the day it starts being hard to keep track of what number photo we're on," and we're officially into Fall here in the Northeast US. Accordingly, it's a bit chilly (about 30F colder than a week ago), and while most of the leaves are still green, we're starting to see some…
It's rained fairly steadily for the last couple of days, which is to be expected. This also sent me to the back yard in hopes of getting a very particular effect for the photo of the day, that I had seen on a poster from the APS's student photo contest a few years ago:
Water drops on the canopy on…
