No blogging this weekend, and not even a Links Dump for Monday morning, because I was busy with non-blog stuff all weekend. Such as fencing in Lake Steelypips: OK, maybe that's too grandiose a name for the little decorative pond in our back yard. It's not all that large, but it is big enough to put SteelyKid at risk should she fall in, so it needed to be fenced. The actual fencing operation was dead simple, but was delayed for a bit when I forgot that I really ought to enclose the electrical outlet (for the pond pump) in the fence, requiring a second trip to Lowe's. Between that and an…

Mightygodking.com » Post Topic » The Accidental Trilogy: Logan's Run, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man "The problem is, Lucas made [Star Wars] so immersive that nobody noticed the allegory, and the effects so beautiful that everyone judged all subsequent films by the standards he set. From now on, an important aspect of all science-fiction movies would be, "Are the effects realistic?" The cinema of ideas was replaced, in that instant, by the cinema of visceral experience. Sci-fi became all about making you feel as if you were there, recreating the documentary feel of Star Wars instead of…

Neil Fraser: Hardware: Lava Lamp Centrifuge "Would a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Would the wax still rise to the surface? Would the blobs be smaller and faster? With broad disagreement on the answers, I built a large centrifuge to find out." (tags: physics gravity experiment science video planets astronomy silly) LaserFest | SpectraSound Music Transmission Device "All too often a great dance party is ruined because the stereo is far off over yonder. Well never let that happen to you again. We at LaserFest present you with SpectraSound -the device that…

The National Science Board made a deeply regrettable decision to omit questions on evolution and the Big Bang from the Science and Engineering Indicators report for 2010. As you might expect, this has stirred up some controversy. I wasn't surprised to learn this, as I had already noticed the omission a couple of months ago, when I updated the slides for my talk on public communication of science-- the figure showing survey data in the current talk doesn't include those questions, while the original version has them in there. I noticed it, and thought it was a little odd, but it had no effect…

There's no rest for the wicked, as last weekend's hectic running around is followed by another busy weekend, with some on-campus stuff on Sunday as part of our annual Accepted Students Days. More importantly, though, I will be on a panel at the Empire State book Festival on Saturday from 12:45-1:30 pm: BLOOK: Going from Blog to Book Empire State Convention Center, Meeting Room 4 Books derived from blogs are a publishing phenomenon of the past few years. Why is there an audience for previously digital content in analog form, and what does this say about the future of the book? Hear from a…

Physics Buzz: 490 billion nanometers tall "There are seven SI base units: meter (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol), and candela (cd). The other SI units are derived from these seven: acceleration is m/s^2, density is kg/m^3, magnetic field strength is A/m, etc. According to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the keeper of the units, the SI is "a living system which evolves, and which reflects current best measurement practice." Here is a quick rundown of the basis for the SI base units, as defined by the governing body, the General…

"What's SteelyKid doing for amusement now that the weather is all nice and stuff?," you ask. Well, here's your answer: she's giving her sky-bison rides on the swing in the back yard: "Wait a minute," you say, "isn't it, like, 80 degrees there? Why's she wearing a coat?" Look, man, when the Empress decides she wants to wear her coat, she's going to wear her coat. There's no reasoning with a willful toddler. Fortunately, she's pretty darn cute. And swinging is highly entertaining: Of course, at some point, you have to call it a night, pack up your sky-bison, and head in for the night: (It…

Via Twitter, Michael Barton is looking for some good books about physics. I was Twitter-less for a few days around the period of his request, and this is a more-than-140-characters topic if ever there was one, so I'm turning it into a blog post. The reason for the request is that he's going to be working as an intern at the Einstein exhibit when it visits Portland, which makes this a little tricky, as relativity is not an area I've read a lot of popular books in (yet-- that's changing). That will make this a little more sparse than it might be in some other fields. There's also an essential…

Back when I was in grad school, and paper copies of journals were delivered to the lab by a happy mailman riding a brontosaurus, I used to play a little game when the new copy of Physical Review Letters arrived: I would flip through the papers in the high energy and nuclear physics sections, and see if I could find one where the author list included at least one surname for every letter of the alphabet. There wasn't one every week, but it wasn't that hard (particularly with large numbers of physicists from China, where family names beginning with "X" are more common). Every so often, somebody…

Wave interference: where does the energy go? « Skulls in the Stars The two waves cancel each other out, leaving a completely unmoving string due to destructive interference. My student asked me: what happens to the energy? As posed, it seems that we started with two waves carrying energy, but they canceled each other out, leaving no energy! This interpretation cannot possibly be correct, so where is the flaw in our description? There are actually two aspects to the answer that I want to address, each of which is rather important in the understanding of wave phenomena. The first of…

I'm still getting things squared away after my blogging break, but as a step on the way back toward normal programming, here's a Dorky Poll: What kind of numbers do you most like to work with? What kind of numbers do you like best?online surveys You can only choose a single answer, which I'm sure will come as a disappointment to many of those favoring the later options. You could always vote a second time from a different computer, though...

So, this was my weekend: Saturday: Drive to my parents' with Kate and SteelyKid for Easter. Sunday: Drive back to Niskayuna with Kate, leaving SteelyKid with Grandma and Grandpa Monday: Teach my 9:15 class, then drive to Ithaca to give a physics colloquium at Cornell, then drive back to my parents', arriving just in time for the NCAA title game (great game, bad result). Tuesday: Drive back to Niskayuna with SteelyKid, then go to a local mall for a couple hours so she wouldn't feel understimulated after a few days of Grandparent Camp. This was all intentional, by the way-- it's not like we…

Not a full Obsessive Update (because not much happened over the weekend, when we took SteelyKid to my parents' place for Easter), but a quick reminder to folks in the Ithaca, NY area: I'll be giving the physics colloquium at Cornell this afternoon at 4pm. If you're in the area, and want to hear me talk about communicating science and the use of blogs, it's at 4pm in the Schwartz Auditorium in Rockefeller Hall. It's going to be a long day-- I have a class at 9:15, then I'm driving to Ithaca. SteelyKid stayed with Grandma and Grandpa (day care is closed today and tomorrow), so I'll be going…

I forgot to schedule a blog post to remind people to tune in to my appearance on WAMC's "The Roundtable" yesterday morning, talking about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. If you missed it, and have fourteen minutes to kill, they have the segment on their audio archive now. It went well, and I had fun. I was really flattered when somebody at work asked if I'd gotten the questions in advance-- actually, I only got into the studio about three minutes before the interview started. Nice to see that a real radio studio looks pretty much like what you see on tv and in movies, only smaller, as is…

As I was headed upstairs to bed last night, I stopped in the library, and said "There's something I ought to be doing..." but couldn't remember what. This morning, while walking Emmy, it hit me: Baby Blogging! It's weird that I forgot, because I went to the trouble of taking pictures and everything: This is SteelyKid hanging out on the swing in the back yard, drinking some juice. As you can tell by the short sleeves, it's Fake Summer here, and the backyard was warm and pleasant last night after day care. I have some other pictures where she and Appa aren't cropped as tightly as they are here…

If you scroll way down the list of this year's Goldwater Scholarship winners, you'll find: Peter John Bonventre Institution: Union College Major(s): Physics/Mathematics Career Goal: Ph.D. in Mathematics or Physics. Conduct research and teach at the university level. Pete's one of our junior physics majors. He's done summer work on both nuclear physics and condensed matter physics, and is a work-study student in the department. So, we're obviously thrilled to see him win. Congratulations, Pete! There's a Goldwater Foundation press release here, with more information and statistics about the…

Physics Central is having a contest: Do you love lasers? Ever wanted to unravel the mystery of the stimulated emission? Then the LaserFest video contest is for you. Take any laser you want and use it to somehow express a physics concept. Shine, lase, bounce and wave your way into physics history. The winner will receive a trophy lovingly made by APS staff from some of our favorite laser toys as well as $1,000 cash. All entries must be received by May 16th at midnight. If you know how to make videos for YouTube, and know something about physics, here's your chance at (Internet) fame and (…

SteelyKid is a fan of a web game called BumperStars, which my parents introduced her to. If I'm at the computer doing something, she'll march over, demand to be picked up, then point at the screen and say "Buh-Pah" until I open it up. Of course, she's a toddler, and thus has an extremely short attention span (except when she doesn't). About two minutes after I start a game for her, she'll slide down off my lap, and go find something else to do. Which would be fine, except for one thing: I have competitive OCD. I don't mean that I try to one-up other people who have obsessive-compulsive…

A flurry of things to kick off the new academic term. Reviews and news: A nice write-up on Wired's GeekDad blog by Kathy Ceceri, about last week's homeschool event. Includes a picture of me giving a tour of my lab. ZapperZ says that I'm not teaching physics, I'm teaching about physics. Which is probably fair, as he defines the terms. Of course, How to Teach Your Dog About Physics isn't as good a title. And a bunch of upcoming events: I'll be on WAMC's Roundtable this Thursday at 10am (well, after the news report that runs at the top of the hour). I'm giving a Physics colloquium at Cornell…

It's grey and dreary here, with an expected high temperature around 50F. That can only mean one thing: Spring has arrived in New England! (You can distinguish spring from winter by the daytime high temperatures-- they're both grey and dreary, but winter is grey, dreary, and cold...) Spring means mud, yard work, and a new academic term. But on the bright side, spring also gives SteelyKid an excuse to show off her spiffy spring hat: Hope your spring gets off to a good start.