drorzel | May 13, 2009
Angels & Demons - The science behind the story
CERN explains what antimatter is really about.
(tags: science physics education movies particles)
Figgleton v. Ditchens « Easily Distracted
"As with many similarly well-worn discussions, Iâd just as soon review the available lines of argument about why secular or atheistic thinkers perhaps should have an interest in religion or spirituality which goes beyond being resolutely hostile, which takes religion to be an interesting subject to investigate with an open mind (rather than just finding new ways to arrive at familiar criticisms). Any…
drorzel | May 13, 2009It has come to my attention that unspecified people are having a bad couple of days for unspecified reasons and could use a pick-me-up. Thus, I give you the cutest laughing baby in the universe.
Hope this helps. Have a nice day.
drorzel | May 13, 2009An example problem from today's lecture:
A sleep-deprived parent is warming a bottle for a midnight feeding. He places a bottle containing 250 ml of infant formula at 275K into 300 ml of water at 320 K. When the two liquids reach equilibrium, what is the temperature of the formula?
Answer: Trick question! While the bottle is warming, he dozes off holding the baby, and by the time they wake up, both bottle and water have cooled to only 288K.
drorzel | May 13, 2009I'm currently the president of the local chapter of Sigma Xi (an honor society, not a fraternity, thankyouverymuch), and as such have been collecting RSVP's and dues for this year's new inductees. As part of this process, I've been struck by how many students don't have checks-- I've had a couple of students give me cash, one cashier's check from a local bank, a couple of checks drawn on parental accounts, and one check from the roommate of a nominee.
The first couple, I wrote off as individual eccentricities, but after a few more, and a little thought, I realized that this pattern is…
drorzel | May 12, 2009
Spirit Stuck - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society
"The Spirit rover on Mars is currently stuck in a patch of loose material. After a few attempts to get free, the team has wisely decided to do further experiments on Earth instead of on Mars. They will now recreate the conditions in our sandbox at JPL and test out different sequences until one works reliably here, then try it on Mars. "
(tags: science astronomy news space planets)
The GOP's misguided and confusing campaign against judicial empathy. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
"When did the simple act of…
drorzel | May 12, 2009As you can guess from the title, I've done this twice before when I had stuff to do that precluded quality blogging. Kate's in Rochester for a court appearance, leaving me home with SteelyKid, so this seems like a perfect occasion for a third go-round.
The pairs of words in the following list are consecutive words from pop songs that I think might be identifiable given just those two words.The songs range from kind of obvious to impossibly obscure. If you think you know the answer, post a comment completing the line, and then suggest your own two-word phrase from a different song for other…
drorzel | May 11, 2009
18 and Under - The Marks of Childhood or the Marks of Abuse? - NYTimes.com
"This year, the study of child abuse is coming of age as a medical specialty. In November, the first medical board exam will be offered in a new official specialty, child abuse pediatrics. Knowledge and research that have accumulated over decades about the effects of physical abuse and sexual abuse are being codified into a curriculum; fellowship training in the field will have to meet certain standards; an expert, testifying in court, can expect to be questioned about being board-certified. "
(tags: science medicine…
drorzel | May 11, 2009A former student asks about water contamination:
My mother went and had
our water tested and discovered that we have high uranium and radon
levels. Radon is not a big deal, its a gas, and as I have read you would
need to take a shower for somewhere around 4 hours to suffer damage from
it. The Uranium is a different story. They are no government set minimums
set for Uranium, what is an appropriate amount of radiation for a year?
Also wouldn't Uranium pass through our bodies before it decayed? Also how
would I calculate how much Uranium would be dangerous, in a how many parts
per water?
I…
drorzel | May 11, 2009Over at the Inverse Square blog, Tom Levenson announces that he's started Twittering in a post that contains, via Carl Zimmer, the best argument for why Twitter matters:
Carl laughs me out of my seat. He points out that he tweeted his visit to my class, and received in return a couple of requests to pass on hellos from blogospheric friends I haven't seen since January (hello back, Dave); that a growing audience exists to feed him almost real time reactions to questions; that whatever I might think there is a hierarchy of information, and if I ignore the swift and the short, then I lose my…
drorzel | May 11, 2009It's that time of year again in academia. The time when academics at other institutions write posts directed at graduates, reminding me that summer is starting for everybody else, while we have another four %$^*$ing weeks to go before the end of the term.
Grumble, mutter, grump. Stupid calendar.
drorzel | May 11, 2009Everybody I know who has back problems swears up and down that sleeping on a really firm mattress is key. My father used to have a big plywood board under his side of the mattress, so that his side of the bed would be less soft (I think they have since bought a new mattress that is uniformly hard).
So, why is it that every time I sleep on a mattress that's firmer than the one we have here, my lower back locks up so badly that it's an hour before I can walk comfortably? And when I get back to our relatively soft bed, my back feels fine in the morning?
I suppose this could be some sort of grand…
drorzel | May 10, 2009
Disco Hayes: It's all Greek to me
"And then the joke hits me. It's witty, it's relevant ... ah, it's perfect. It happens so fast, before I know it my lips are making a coy, dry grin to indicate I'm about to be a smart alec. I figure the Doctor has a hundred physicals to perform, I might as well make a part of his day funny. Accordingly, I ask, "Would you say it's my Achilles Heel?" I swear I'm not making this up. It was so perfect. Contextually ... My entire body functions perfectly, but there's one specific area that may be a flaw that could lead to an injury? And it's my Achilles? Gold.…
drorzel | May 9, 2009
The winners of Slate's "Define Baseball in 150 Words" contest. - By John Dickerson - Slate Magazine
"Seven guys wait for these other two guys to play catch but this other guy is jealous because he wants to play and so he's trying to stop them with a stick." should've won.
(tags: silly sports slate)
Manny being woman-y. - By Juliet Lapidos - Slate Magazine
"Major League Baseball suspended Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday, after investigators turned up documents suggesting that the slugger was using human chorionic gonadotropin. Typically a fertility drug for women, HCG…
drorzel | May 8, 2009
The Final Frontier: The Science of Star Trek: Scientific American
"To get a sense of how much actual science has made its way into the science fiction universe of Star Trek, ScientificAmerican.com spoke to Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek, the first edition of which appeared on bookshelves in 1995. [...]
We asked Krauss about the plausibility of crossovers from the Trek universe, including warp speed, humanoid aliens such as Klingons and, of course, whether anyone will be "beamed up" by Scotty or otherwise, anytime soon."
(tags: science astronomy physics culture…
drorzel | May 8, 2009It's a nice demonstration of the oddity of the blogosphere that a libertarian political blog has become my go-to-source for thoughtful blogging about physics education. Thoreau had two good posts yesterday at Unqualified Offerings, one on the problems created by breaking down incorrect intuition, and another on the lack of calculus in calculus-based physics texts:
The ostensibly calculus-based introductory physics book by Knight is not really a calculus-based book. Sure, integrals and derivatives pop up here and there, but the vast majority of the problems can be solved without them, and…
drorzel | May 8, 2009Via Michael Nielsen, a page documenting what I really hope is the dorkiest family vacation ever: Project GREAT: General Relativity Einstein/Essen Anniversary Test Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier:
In September 2005 (for the 50th anniversary of the atomic clock and 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity) we took several cesium clocks on a road trip to Mt Rainier; a family science experiment unlike anything you've seen before.
By keeping the clocks at altitude for a weekend we were able to detect and measure the effects of relativistic time dilation compared to atomic…
drorzel | May 8, 2009We had a colloquium yesterday from Ted von Hippel of Siena College, over on Route 9, about "White Dwarf Debris Disks and the Fate of Planetary Systems." The abstract was:
After a brief introduction to white dwarfs and debris disks, I will present observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes of metal-polluted white dwarfs with circumstellar debris disks. We measure the constituents of the debris disks, the elemental abundances of the material being accreted, and the accretion timescale. Our measurements support the idea that disruptions of asteroids created these…
drorzel | May 8, 2009I get sent a lot of publicity material by people hoping I'll mention it on the blog, but because I'm a terrible person, very little of it actually gets used. One thing that shouldn't be allowed to slip through the cracks, though, is the announcement of the program for the 2009 World Science Festival, June 11-14 in New York City.
There's a lot of interesting stuff there. The emails I got specifically mentioned the Opening Gala, which I suspect is likely to be a little more expensive than I'd like. Unless some New York based science magazine were willing to cough up some, let's call it "seed…
drorzel | May 7, 2009
Evolution and the Second Law | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"Without even addressing the question of how âlifeâ should be defined, we can ask what sounds like a subsequent question: does life make thermodynamic sense? The answer, before you get too excited, is âyes.â But the opposite has been claimed â not by any respectable scientists, but by creationists looking to discredit Darwinian natural selection as the correct explanation for the evolution of life on Earth. One of their arguments relies on a misunderstanding of the Second Law, which they read as âentropy always increases,â…
drorzel | May 7, 2009It's been an uneven week for SteelyKid. She was a litle bit sick last week, and really only got better last weekend, only to turn listless and feverish at day care Monday. This led to yet another trip to the pediatrician, at which we learned that waking a sleeping baby up to press a cold stethoscope to her chest is the End of the World.
She's improved dramatically from that unpleasant visit, though, and did some painting yesterday at day care, and today felt well enough to wrestle a bison:
That's not the best Appa-for-scale picture, but how could I resist that expression? For a wider angle…