My talk at Maryland last Thursday went pretty well-- the impending Snowpocalypse kept the audience down, as people tried to fit in enough work to compensate for the Friday shutdown, but the people who were there seemed to like it, and asked good questions. If you weren't there, but want to know what I talked about, here are the slides on SlideShare: Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters and How Weblogs Can Help View more presentations from Chad Orzel. This flattens out some of the more animation-dependent jokes, but gets you the basic idea. It is, of…

Miscellaneous stories and links about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Kathy Ceceri, who wrote the story about the book that ran in the Times Union, has posted the full article on the Home Physics blog. The link to the paper itself may very well disappear behind a paywall, but this post should remain accessible. There's an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that I can't read because I'm not a subscriber, and I don't remember the password needed to access it via the library subscription. If anybody has access and would like to tell me what it says, that would be cool. (UPDATE: I've…

We're mere hours away from the start of the Super Bowl, the biggest football game of the year. Obviously, the question of who will win has been the subject of much debate over the last couple of weeks on sports media and in offices around the country. What these discussions have lacked, though, is Science!!! (with any number of exclamation points). So, let's employ science to determine the winner in advance, with a totally accurate Internet poll: Who will win the Super Bowl?(polls) The game kicks off around 6:30pm ET, so make sure you vote before then, if you want your vote to have…

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 6, 010101 (2010): Teaching and understanding of quantum interpretations in modern physics courses "Just as expert physicists vary in their personal stances on interpretation in quantum mechanics, instructors vary on whether and how to teach interpretations of quantum phenomena in introductory modern physics courses. In this paper, we document variations in instructional approaches with respect to interpretation in two similar modern physics courses recently taught at the University of Colorado, and examine associated impacts on student perspectives regarding…

It's been brought to my attention that there hasn't been any cute-baby video posted here for a while, so let me rectify that with a couple of clips. First, SteelyKid discovers that it's kind of difficult to fill Daddy's shoes: For both our sakes, I hope those never fit her. A clear indication of inheritance at work is the way she talks with her hands, as seen in this second clip: I have no idea what she's saying, but she certainly says it with feeling.

I want to like this book more than I do. As a general matter, this is exactly the sort of science book we need more of. As you can probably guess from the title, Why Does E=mc2? sets out to explain Einstein's theory of relativity, and does an excellent job of it. It presents a clear and concise explanation of the theory for a non-scientific audience, using no math beyond the Pythagorean Theorem. I picked this up partly as research of a sort-- if there is ever a How to Teach Physics to Your Dog 2: Canine Boogaloo, the most obvious topic for it would be relativity, which I mention a few times,…

A couple of things happening in the next week, for those who would like some How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. On the radio side, I am scheduled for an interview at 6:30 this Tuesday, Feb. 9, on KSOO's Viewpoint University. If you don't happen to be in the Sioux Falls, SD area, they do have a "Listen Live" button on their web page. On the live-action side of things, I will be at Boskone next weekend, and am scheduled to sign books at 1pm Saturday, and to do a reading at 9:30 am Sunday. I realize that's sort of early in con world, so to make it worth your while to get up that early, I plan to…

I'm safely back, well ahead of the Snowpocalypse!!! I'm kind of out of it, though-- yesterday was a very long day, and I find air travel draining at the best of times-- so in lieu of substantive blogging, I offer you this thematically appropriate poll: Which of these travel-related songs is the best?(survey software) (Strictly speaking, two of those are the same song, but the end results are different enough to list them separately.)

I have chickened out in the face of the Snowpocalypse, and moved my flight up to get out of DC before the storm. I'm too old to sleep in airports any more. In honor of my spending another day on a plane, here's another airline-themed poll for you: The flight crew insist I turn off and stow my iPod during take-off and landing because:(answers) In the unlikely event of a loss of cabin pressure, please enter your own vote before assisting your fellow passengers in entering theirs. (I can provide empirical evidence that at least one of these is wrong.)

Failure rate for AP tests climbing - USATODAY.com "The newspaper's analysis finds that more than two in five students (41.5%) earned a failing score of 1 or 2, up from 36.5% in 1999. In the South, a Census-defined region that spans from Texas to Delaware, nearly half of all tests -- 48.4% -- earned a 1 or 2, a failure rate up 7 percentage points from a decade prior and a statistically significant difference from the rest of the country." (tags: academia education class-war us statistics) Physics Buzz: Study Physics - It's the Whole Enchilada "If you're gonna study something, you might as…

(A.k.a. "just under the wire Baby Blogging, because Kate forgot she took these pictures.") In which SteelyKid performs a magic trick: "Watch me make this pretzel disappear, Mom!" "Wait a minute . . . " "Hey! No photography! Now give me that camera and no-one will get hurt." And that's why there's no Appa picture today.

Despite my best efforts to sleep late and miss my flight, I made it to the airport with plenty of time to get on my flight to DC. Which means that I will, i fact, be giving a talk TODAY at 3:30 pm at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Lecture Hall (room 1110) in the Kim Engineering Building. The title of the talk is "Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How Weblogs Can Help." If you're in the DC area, and not stuck in a long line to buy bread and milk in advance of the coming Snowpocalypse, come to my talk, which will feature at least…

I'm on the road today, so here's a poll for you, in honor of the question I will probably be getting asked right around when this posts: Would you like a beverage?(surveys) Please be sure that your comments are stowed beneath the seat in front of you, or in the overhead compartment. Thank you for flying Uncertain Principles.

From Fish to Infinity - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com I'll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who'd like to have a second chance at the subject -- but this time from an adult perspective. It's not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it's so enthralling to those who get it. (tags: math education science society culture blogs)

It's been a while since I've done a fun with graphs post about the Amazon sales rank of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, but that's not because I've stopped tracking it. It's getting to be enough data, though, that it's worthwhile to look on a slightly coarser scale, so here's the sales rank data binned by day: This shows some clear structure, specifically two points with dramatic drops (that is, dramatic improvements in the Amazon rank-- smaller numbers are better), followed by slow climbs. The two big improvements correspond to the immediate post-publication blog boost, and the…

Yesterday's post on a variation of the "Twin Paradox" with both twins accelerating was very successful-- 337 people voted in the first poll question, as of a little before 9am, and the comments to the original post are full of lively discussion. That's awesome. I wish I could take credit for it, but the problem posed is not original to me. It comes from a 1989 paper in the American Journal of Physics, which also includes the following illustration setting up the situation: The article contains a full explanation, and also the following figure illustrating the result: The correct answer is…

In the wake of recent political developments, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about why Democrats in Congress are so spineless, and have been unable to pass meaningful legislation despite huge majorities. After thinking about my travel plans last night, I think I have the key to the Grand Unified Theory of American politics. The problem is not that Democratic politicians are uniquely craven, or venal, or anything like that. The problem is Washington, DC. No, this is not a prelude to some right-wing rant about how the Real America can be found only in states with more livestock than…

Researchers use infrared cameras to determine taste quality of Japanese beef "Imagine going into a local supermarket or butchery, pulling out your cell phone and using its camera to instantly check for the best piece of meat on display. That is one of the applications that some in Japan hope could become possible one day from scientific research into using infrared cameras to grade the taste of high-quality beef."f (tags: optics food science physics biology Japan news) I don't know what this has to do with eBooks, but I'll blog it anyway § Unqualified Offerings "The Defense Secretary and…

As mentioned previously, I'm giving a talk at the University of Maryland, College Park this Thursday, Feb 4 at 3:30 pm in the Lecture Hall (room 1110) in the Kim Engineering Building. The title of the talk is "Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How Weblogs Can Help"-- stop by if you're in the area. I'll be in the DC area on Friday as well, doing some other stuff, and I don't leave until Saturday. Unfortunately, the DC area is forecast to get heavy snow on Friday into Saturday, and given the way that part of the country gets its knickers in a…

Just about everybody has heard of the Twin Paradox in relativity: one twin becomes as astronaut and sets off for Alpha Centauri, the other remains on Earth at mission control. Thanks to time dilation, the two age at different rates, and the one who made the trip out and back ends up younger than the one who stayed behind. Of course, the paradox is not that the two twins have different ages-- rather, it's that from a simple approach to special relativity, you would think that each twin should see the other's clock running slow, since it seems like getting into a rocket and flying off into…