drorzel | December 11, 2014I've been trying to keep to a roughly chronological ordering of these stories, but this slow-motion snow storm that was waiting to greet us on our return from Florida made the schools open on a two-hour delay today, which eats the time I usually use for blogging and books stuff. So I'm going to jump forward three hundred years, to a story that I can outsource.
To set the stage, in the aftermath of WWII, Richard Feynman took up a faculty job at Cornell, but between working on the Manhattan Project and the death of his beloved wife, he found that he was completely burned out, and not able to do…
drorzel | December 11, 2014Yesterday, I drove through the slush to Albany to do an appearance on KERA radio's "Think" from a studio there. The audio is at that link.
It was a bit of a strange experience, because I drove to a place to do the interview in a radio studio, but I was the only one in the room, taking questions from a disembodied voice. I enjoyed it, though, and the audio quality is a lot better than you would've gotten from even a land-line phone. This was a live show, including some call-in questions, and that always has a working-without-a-net quality that is kind of exciting. I got in a bunch of stories…
drorzel | December 10, 2014The final step of the scientific process is to share your results with others, and that's the step where things are most prone to breaking down. Countless great discoveries have been delayed or temporarily lost because the people who made them were more concerned with protecting "their" secrets than with sharing new knowledge with the world. A classic example of this, that I first heard from Michael Nielsen, is Robert Hooke in 1676 first reporting the relationship for elastic forces as "ceiiinossssttuv," which unscrambles to "ut tensio, sic vis," indicating that the force is proportional to…
drorzel | December 10, 2014So, you've picked up your copy of the just-released Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist-- you have bought a copy, right?-- and now you're thinking "I'd love to curl up and read this, but what should I listen to while I do that?"
Well, never fear, I'm here to help. Also, I'm really tired, and this seems like a quick and easy blog post... Anyway, here are some of the crucial records involved in the making of this book.
1) Teeth Dreams by the Hold Steady This was probably the most crucial album of the lot, because it came out just at the time I needed to power through a whole bunch of edits…
drorzel | December 9, 2014Today is the official release date for Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, so of course there are a bunch of exciting things happening:
-- There's a short excerpt at the Science of Us blog from New York Magazine. This is a chunk of the Introduction, about how scientists are smart, but not that smart.
-- I wrote a Big Idea essay at Whatever, talking about how this book is about the BIGGEST idea in the history of humanity. Which is only a tiny bit of hyperbole.
-- Rosemary Kirstein included Eureka as a gift suggestion, which is very cool, as she writes awesome books. You should check them…
drorzel | December 9, 2014
I tooke a bodkine gh & put it betwixt my eye & [the] bone as neare to [the] backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye [with the] end of it (soe as to make [the] curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles r, s, t, &c. Which circles were plainest when I continued to rub my eye [with the] point of [the] bodkine, but if I held my eye & [the] bodkin still, though I continued to presse my eye [with] it yet [the] circles would grow faint & often disappeare untill I removed [them] by moving my eye or [the] bodkin.
If [the…
drorzel | December 9, 2014Copies of Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist have been turning up in the wild for a while now, but the officially official release date is today (available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound, Powell’s, and anywhere else books are sold). To mark that, here's some stuff I wrote about the core message of the book, presented in Internet-friendly listicle form:
Eight Things You Need to Know About Science
1) Everybody Is a Scientist: Most people picture scientists as remote eggheads, who think in ways that ordinary people can’t comprehend, but the reality is very different. Scientists…
drorzel | December 8, 2014This entry doesn't have a fictionalized story both because I'm on vacation, and because I don't think there's a single dramatic turning point in this particular story. It's probably one of the most impressive human accomplishments of the last umpteen thousand years, though, and definitely deserves a place in any rundown of wonders of science. I'm speaking, of course, of corn.
To a modern American, of course, corn (or "maize" if you want to sound European) doesn't seem especially impressive or scientific, but it ranks as a great accomplishment because of where it came from. Which, as far as we…
drorzel | December 7, 2014Following on yesterday's story of transformative discoveries starting by accident, we'll jump from the Middle East to the Far East for the probably apocryphal story of the Empress Leizu (also sometimes referred to as Xi Lingshi) who is credited with the discovery of silk around 2600 BCE. One of the many versions of the story has it that she was drinking tea in her garden, and a silkworm coccoon fell into her tea. When she poked at it to get it out of the hot water, the thread unraveled, and she became fascinated with it.
From there, her experiments with silk threads and silkworms led her to…
drorzel | December 6, 2014
Borne of the flowing water (...)
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Borne of the flowing water (...)
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its great walls for you
Your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake,
Ninkasi, Your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
You are the one who handles the dough,
[and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with…
drorzel | December 6, 2014We flew down to Florida Friday afternoon, on a Southwest flight to Tampa. While waiting to board, SteelyKid of course struck up a conversation with basically everybody in the vicinity, but mostly an older Asian woman who was behind us.
That woman also ended up in the seat directly behind SteelyKid. As this was a window seat, there was a good deal of space between the seat and the window, so while we waited to take off, SteelyKid carried on cheerful conversations with both The Pip iun the row ahead of us, and the woman from the boarding line in the seat behind. I didn't pay all that much…
drorzel | December 5, 2014
"More wine?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes, thank you. Sorry, I was--"
"Thinking about mathematics, I wager. Prime numbers was it?"
"No, just distracted. It's this blasted heat."
"It is the longest day of the year."
"Yes, but normally not so hot."
"Especially here. You think this is hot, visit me in Syene sometime. You think it gets hot here... You would melt in Syene in the summer."
"So I hear. I suppose it's the moderating influence of the ocean that keeps us cooler."
"That, and we're closer to the Sun."
"What?"
"It's true. Today in Syene, the Sun will be directly overhead at mid-day, while you still have…
drorzel | December 5, 2014I've decided to do a new round of profiles in the Project for Non-Academic Science (acronym deliberately chosen to coincide with a journal), as a way of getting a little more information out there to students studying in STEM fields who will likely end up with jobs off the "standard" academic science track.
The eleventh profile of this round features Benoit Hamelin, a biomedical engineer turned network defense programmer.
1) What is your non-academic job? I am Chief Scientist for Arc4dia, a small company in the computer security and private network defense business. I develop software, lead…
drorzel | December 5, 2014A couple of quick updates on Eureka publicity, as we get on a plane today to take the kids to Florida for the weekend:
-- APS News has an excerpt from the chapter on collecting hobbies. This is kind of choppy, obviously cut down to meet a word count limit of some sort, but it gets the basic flavor across.
-- I'll be appearing on KERA radio's "Think" on Wednesday December 10 from 12-1 Central time (1-2pm Eastern). This will be a live interview, possibly including call-in questions.
-- I'll be on WAMC's Roundtable on December 19; I don't have the exact time yet, but will update when I get that…
drorzel | December 4, 2014After a loooong hiatus due to incompatible work schedules, Rhett and I are back with our intermittent hangout series. We talk about space programs, the engineering mindset, and cool stuff you can do with liquid nitrogen.
Amazingly, we didn't actually talk about our current (well, recently-completed, in my case) classes. That might be a first for Uncertain Dots...
drorzel | December 4, 2014
The southeastern sky had been lightening for some time, stars slowly fading away. Off to the west, a band of clouds was moving in, obscuring stars as it came, but they wouldn't make it in time to block the sunrise. A good thing, as the last two dawns had been cloudy. There would be maybe two more chances this year to see if everything worked, then another full turn of the seasons before their next chance.
She sat on the cold ground, behind the offering bowls, a bit off the line of the main passage. She was inside the ring of posts marking the final perimeter, but outside what would become…
drorzel | December 4, 2014I've decided to do a new round of profiles in the Project for Non-Academic Science (acronym deliberately chosen to coincide with a journal), as a way of getting a little more information out there to students studying in STEM fields who will likely end up with jobs off the "standard" academic science track.
The tenth profile of this round features the editor of PhysicsWorld.com, which is probably the best physics magazine web site out there.
1) What is your non-academic job? I am editor of physicsworld.com, which is a website aimed at working physicists and people with a background in physics…
drorzel | December 3, 2014
The fungal tea tastes vile, and not for the first time he considers dumping it on the last of the morning's fire. It does seem to be helping the pain in his gut, though, as the medicine man said it would, so he gulps the last of it with a grimace. Around him the younger members of the raiding party are packing up the camp, making ready to head higher up the mountain.
He checks the head of his axe, out of habit, making sure the copper blade is still sharp and securely fixed. Not that he had much doubt-- he had shaped it himself, and it would take more than chopping wood for last night's fire…
drorzel | December 3, 2014I've decided to do a new round of profiles in the Project for Non-Academic Science (acronym deliberately chosen to coincide with a journal), as a way of getting a little more information out there to students studying in STEM fields who will likely end up with jobs off the "standard" academic science track.
Ninth in this round is a physics major turned semiconductor engineer.
1) What is your non-academic job? I am a Plasma Etch Process Engineer at Avago Technologies, which is a semiconductor/MEMS company that produces Wireless semiconductor devices.
2) What is your science background? I…
drorzel | December 2, 2014 A few smallish items regarding Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist:
-- I'll be doing a signing at the Open Door bookstore in Schenectady next Sunday, the 14th, from 12-1:30. The Open door is one of the kids' favorite spots, as it's right outside the Sunday market we go to every week, so this is fun. Last time I did a signing there, they had a couple of copies for me to sign from people who couldn't make it, so if you'd like a signed copy, you could give them a call, and see what they can do.
(No other bookstore appearances scheduled right at the moment, but if you'd like me to come…