I had the tab open and everything, and still somehow forgot to include a link to John Baez's blog post reporting on a talk by Tony Leggett which directly addresses some of the questions asked about yesterday's superconductivity post. It's about a talk called "Cuprate superconductivity: the current state of play" ("state of play" apparently being a favorite phrase of Leggett's), and directly addresses what's weird about high-temperature superconductors and why they haven't been explained theoretically. These are notes from a talk, and thus somewhat compressed, but it's a good summary of the…

The Virtuosi: Steak Dinner "I recently got a new digital meat thermometer. My plan was to slowly cook the steak until the internal temperature got to be about 140 degrees Fahrenheit with the oven at 200 degrees, take it out, wrap in tin foil, crank the oven to 500 degrees, stick it back in, and give it a nice exterior, reaching an internal temperature of about 150 degrees which would put it at about medium. After I put the steak into the oven though, I started to watch the temperature go up on my digital thermometer and thought, why not take data. And so I did. Here are the results." (tags…

SteelyKid's second birthday is Saturday, so we're getting her a few things. Given the recent video I posted, one of her presents was really obvious: As you can tell, she's inherited her father's skillset. If the dunk picture doesn't convince you, this picture of her ace ball-handling ought to: Not even two, and she can dribble it off her foot, just like her old man. She's a prodigy, she is. The hoop and ball were a big hit-- we had to drage the ball along with us when we went out to dinner that night. The other big treat of the day was a visit from Grandma and Grandpa, who brought along…

There's a great post at NeuroDojo on the Heffernan business this weekend, and what the take-away ought to be: Yeah, let's criticize that she didn't get past the first impression of science blogs. We should expect Heffernan to look before leaping - she writes for the Times, after all, which still has a certain reputation as a paper of record and quality. But let's not pretend that her impression ain't shared by anyone else. For instance, she took heat for recommending a climate denialist blog. But that's not the first time that blog got recommended by people who ought to know better. That…

In the reader request thread, Brad asks about superconductors: Why is a room temperature superconductor so hard? Why do things have to be cold for there to be no resistance (I can guess, but my knowledge of super conductors consists of the words "Cooper pairs" which does not get me very far.) Since next year will mark 100 years since the initial discovery of superconductivity in mercury by Heike Kammerlingh Onnes, this is a good topic to talk about. Unfortunately, it's a bit outside my field, but I can give you what I know from my not-much-better-than-layman's understanding of the field, and…

Scientopia A new non-profit science blog collective, including several people who left ScienceBlogs in Sodamageddon. (tags: science blogs internet academia) Experimental Error: Don't Try This at Home - Science Careers - Biotech, Pharmaceutical, Faculty, Postdoc jobs on Science Careers "So if you're Doktor Kaboom!, Professor Ker-Splat, or Nobel Laureate "I Didn't Think It Would Blow Up But Then It Totally Went Pfweeeeeeeeeeeee!," maybe it's time to vary the act a bit. Forget about the eyedropper in the 2-liter soda bottle and put together a show based on what scientists actually do. Good…

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings gets credit for inspiring two posts today with his proposed Murphy's Law experiment and this one, about an unrelated issue in quantum measurement. This is an analogy suggested by a colleague a couple of years ago, comparing the projection of a quantum wavefunction in the measurement process to the lottery. The classic example of this problem is something like the double slit experiment with single particles. You have some position-sensitive detector that we can imagine as being made up of a large number of pixels, each having some probability of detecting a…

Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau proposes an an experimental test of Murphy's Law using the lottery. While amusing, it's ultimately flawed-- Murphy's Law is something of the form: Anything that can go wrong, will. Accordingly, it can only properly be applied to situations in which there is a reasonable expectation of success, unless something goes wrong. The odds of winning the lottery are sufficiently low that Murphy's Law doesn't come into play-- you have no reasonable expectation of picking the winning lottery numbers, so there's no need for anything to "go wrong" in order for you…

Avi Steiner emailed me with a set of questions that are too good not to turn into a blog post: Being a math/science major at a small liberal arts college, I unfortunately never get the "full" experience of a math/science talk. Since I do plan on eventually attending grad school, I thought it might be beneficial to get an idea as to what the aforementioned "full" experience is. Therefore, I present to you and your readers the following questions: 1. At what point in a group's/individual's research will they choose to give a talk? 2. What sort of questions are asked? 3. Are there any recurring…

Busted Explanations for Karate Breaking | Rennie's Last Nerve "Martial arts are my hobby and explaining science is my job, so the recent appearance of "How karate chops break concrete blocks" on io9.com naturally caught my eye. Unfortunately, not only did it fall far short of my hopes of offering a lucid explanation, it parroted misleading statements from an article on exactly this same subject that has been annoying me every time I remembered it for 10 years. (Oh wonderful Web, is there no old error you can't make new again?) Indulge me while I try belatedly to set the record straight." (…

Every couple of weeks, there's another bunch of stories about how e-books are transforming the world, and paper books will soon survive only as collectible fetish objects. It occurred to me this morning that I share a house with a reason why paper books will be around for a while yet, at least in some markets. In fact, I share a house with the cutest reason why paper books will be around for a while yet: That's SteelyKid with an alumni magazine, not a book, but you get the basic idea. And a lot of the time, she's much less gentle with her reading material: Kate and I have both largely…

The voting for the 2010 Hugo Awards closed last night. I sent in my ballot yesterday, but I'm trying to limit my computer time this weekend, so I didn't post about it until today. The following lists are my votes, with miscellaneous commentary. The Hugos use a complicated vote-counting scheme, including a "No Award" option to distinguish between works you wouldn't mind seeing win, even if they're not your first choice, and works you consider so bad you would rather see them cancel the award than win. Best Novel The City and the City by China Mieville Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson…

Kwiat Quantum Information Group The quantum physics version of "24." Can Professor Paul Kwiat save his research group from striking grad students, visiting sponsors, broken lasers and a missing password without violating the University of Illinois ethics regulations? (tags: physics academia silly video television quantum) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Best & Worst Job Prospects in the Urban Fantasy Economy for 2011 "WORST PROSPECTS We do not recommend the following fields for 2011: 1. Physicist This profession has abnormally high levels of insanity in the urban…

A lot of Twitter energy was soaked up Friday afternoon by a half stupid article by Virginia Heffernan at the New York Times. Sparked by Sodamageddon, she takes a look at ScienceBlogs for the first time, and doesn't like what she sees: Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that's not what's bothersome about them. What's bothersome is that the site…

slacktivist: If you can make it there "Newcomers are often insecure, and a debt of gratitude can make anyone feel a bit awkward, so I try my best to be patient with some of the sillier things often said by those from the American "heartland" about supposed "East Coast elites" in general and New York in particular. But that patience has its limits and I may have reached those limits listening to various non-New Yorkers bloviating about where and how New Yorkers ought to be allowed to worship. (I'm from the heartland of New Jersey, myself, where I was taught that real Americans don't imagine…

Commenter miller asks: It's often said that virtual particles can "borrow" energy, as long as it's for a short enough time to be compatible with the uncertainty principle. This never made sense to me, because the uncertainty principle says that product of uncertainty in energy and uncertainty in time is greater than h-bar over 2, not less than. Please explain. The relevant equation is in the graphic at the top of this blog, just to the right of the title-- the one with ΔEΔt. It's easy to get turned around with this, due to the slightly unfamiliar business of working with inequalities. The…

There's some good stuff in yesterday's post asking what physics you'd like to read more about. I'm nursing a sore neck and shoulder, so I'll only do one or two quick ones today, starting with James D. Miller in the first comment: 1) Is it true that our understanding of quantum physics comes from studying systems with only a small number of particles and there is a good chance our theories won't hold in more complex systems. It all depends on how you define your terms-- what counts as a "small number" of particles, and what counts as not holding? It's certainly true that most of the…

The New York Times today has a story with the provocative title Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences, about a program at Mount Sinai that allows students to go to med school without taking the three things most dreaded by pre-meds: physics, organic chemistry, and the MCAT: [I]t came as a total shock to Elizabeth Adler when she discovered, through a singer in her favorite a cappella group at Brown University, that one of the nation's top medical schools admits a small number of students every year who have skipped all three requirements. Until then, despite being the daughter of a…

Getting young scientists into the science teacher pipeline: IU News Room: Indiana University "Producing science teachers who can keep up with rapidly advancing fields and can also inspire students is not an easy task. With a grant from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is challenging science majors -- individuals who enjoy and appreciate science -- to transfer their enthusiasm and knowledge to students in middle school and high school classrooms. Through the Noyce Summer Internship…

I don't know if Dijon the giraffe has made a Toddler Blogging appearance yet, but in case she hasn't, here she is: SteelyKid is in the process of explaining that Dijon is her giraffe ("My graph!"). Which she is, being a gift from Aunt Erin and Aunt 'Stasia. She's a rather heavy knit giraffe, and is awesome. And that's all I've got for tonight's Toddler Blogging, as SteelyKid stubbornly refused to go to sleep, or even close her eyes for the hour and a half since bedtime, and I have a horrendous muscle spasm in my neck from sitting with her. Kate's tagged in on "Oh, God, go to sleep already!"…