I'm fairly certain somebody has already done this, because it's such an obvious idea. It's a little beyond my cargo-cult VPython skills right at the moment, though (I can probably learn to do it, but not right now), and I none of the applets I Googled up seemed to be doing this, so I'm posting this sketchy description because I've spent some time thinking about it, and might as well get a blog post out of the deal. So, as we said back in the holiday season, one of the most fundamental concepts in the modern understanding of thermodynamics and statistical physics is the notion of entropy. You…

I've been really bad about documenting The Pip's growth here. The annoying thing is, I've actually taken pictures of him over the last couple of weeks, but I've been too busy to edit and post them. If there's one thing transcontinental flights are good for, though, it's providing you with time to do stuff like this. So, here are some photos of The Pip from the last few weeks, starting with one of this first shots of him smiling: This is a couple of weeks old, already, and he's much more expressive now. Here's an Appa-for-scale shot from the same day: And here's an Appa-for-scale shot from…

While clearing the cars of frost Thursday morning, I was reminded of a difference of opinion Kate and I have about the best approach to a cold car. I tend to start the car up, and immediately turn the defrost on full blast; she prefers to let the car warm up for a while first, because it just blows cold air for a while. My feeling is that while the air from the defrost is not warm in an absolute sense, it's still passed over the engine on the way in, and thus is warmer than the outside air. Which means that it's going to increase the temperature inside the car somewhat, and thus will heat the…

Ben Franklin's 200+ Synonyms for "Drunk" - Mental Floss Today we're celebrating Ben Franklin's 306th birthday. If you're celebrating at home, perhaps one of these phrases from The Drinkers Dictionary will come in handy. The lengthy list of expressions meaning "inebriated" was first published by Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette on January 6, 1737. Feel free to add your own phrases in the comments. Inky Fool: The Fifty Most Quoted Lines of Poetry Shakespeare doesn't make the top ten and Gertrude Stein is more quoted than Byron. Bet you didn't see that coming. BBC News - Children's…

In the same basic vein as last week's How to Read a Scientific Paper, here's a kind of online draft of the class I'm going to give Friday on the appropriate ways to present scientific data. "Present" here meaning the more general "display in some form, be it a talk, a poster, a paper, or just a graph taped into a lab notebook," not specifically standing up and doing a PowerPoint talk (which I've posted about before). So, you've made some measurements of a natural phenomenon. Congratulations, you've done Science! Now, you need to tell the world all about it, in a compact form that allows the…

What I Wish Wikipedia and Others Were Saying About SOPA/PIPA The blackout and other protests today are the result of a long, sustained, full-court press against legislation that's being pushed through despite widespread opposition. Yet, Lamar Smith and many other members of the U.S. House and Senate have been plowing ahead full-steam. Why? Yes, in part because they're well-funded by the entertainment industry, and it wants the bill passed, but also because they think they can. The dirty little secret of SOPA is not that the entertainment industry has far more influence than it ought to have…

The always interesting Timothy Burke has a post that's basically a long links dump pointing to two articles about the state of humanities in academia, which includes a sort of aside that is more interesting to me than either of the linked articles: This leads me to the second piece I really liked in this past week, at Ian Bogost's blog. Now, look, to some extent this essay is just Bogost being Bogost: whether in tweets, blogs or books, you get the clear sense that he exemplifies the quip about not wanting to be part of any club that would have him as a member. The voice that I've built up on…

1 job good, 2 jobs better? § Unqualified Offerings Inspired by FSP's post on 2-body problems in hiring, i.e. situations where both members of a couple are seeking academic jobs, I'd like to pose some challenges to those of my readers with opinions on academic hiring. This topic is usually considered as a moral issue, rather than as a resource issue, and often people do not think through the implications of their stances. Consider several applicants, each of whom provides the information indicated. What effect, if any, should that information have on your hiring decision: Hey Look, Some…

SteelyKid and I have developed a weekend routine: I make pancakes (with her help in mixing and occasionally measuring ingredients) on Saturday morning before we head out (usually to SoccerTots, but the last couple of weeks to birthday parties). On Sunday, we make French toast, before going to the Schenectady Greenmarket. Of course, while this routine may not seem like it involves Science!, it does, as demonstrated by these two pictures: "What do you mean?" you ask, "Those are just two pictures of a pancake. Where's the science in that?" Yes, but why do they look that way? To be a little…

Swans on Tea » The Scientists' Dilemma I recently had an interesting discussion with someone who is interested in science, but without training or experience as a scientist. The question was, basically: Why don't we (scientists) all just lie to each other? i.e. what compels scientists to truthfully share their research results? It's a fair question -- we're human and competitive to some degree, and at first blush there would seem to be a lot to gain from keeping competitors off-balance by feeding them false clues. I will draw a distinction here between non-cooperation, i.e. secrecy, and…

It's a sign of how good computers have gotten that I'm faintly offended whenever Google Translate fails to come up with something even halfway sensible. I mean, translating a blog post from one language to another is a ridiculously difficult problem, and yet they usually do a passable job. It's only when the vanity search turns up something like this blog post in Hebrew that it fails completely, and gives a string of disconnected and incoherent words and phrases. So, here's to the amazing successes of Google Translate. And if anybody can tell me what in the world that blog post says about my…

I reported on the start of this class last week, and sinc ethen, we've had three more class meetings. Since this whole thing is an experiment, I'll keep reporting on it from time to time (heh). First, though, a quick answer to a request from comments: I'd like to hear more about your class on time and timekeeping. How well do you think students learn the big ideas about how science works from these classes, as apposed to a more traditional general physics class? How much transfer do you see in students' understanding of the content of this course to understanding of science in general? The…

In Praise of Footnotes (Polar Bear Cub/Anything But The Republicans Dept.) « The Inverse Square Blog Exit, pursued by a [actual, live, polar] bear. OCD, Vampires, and Rants, oh my! - Men's Versus Women's Poses As mentioned yesterday, I took some inspiration from Jim C Hines's Striking A Pose blog entry and figured I'd do some experimentation on my own. And hey, while I was at it, why not take things one step further and contrast the female poses with some male poses? So I wrapped my bad knee and grabbed my husband, some props, and a camera, and we spent the evening doing a rather…

Jonah Lehrer has a big article at Grantland on concussions in high school football that paints a fairly bleak picture: The sickness will be rooted in football's tragic flaw, which is that it inflicts concussions on its players with devastating frequency. Although estimates vary, several studies suggest that up to 15 percent of football players suffer a mild traumatic brain injury during the season. (The odds are significantly worse for student athletes -- the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 2 million brain injuries are suffered by teenage players every year.)…

I'm running a little short on blogging inspiration lately. This is partly just a function of being busy-- most of my time is spent frantically working on class prep or child maintenance, and another piece is the result of an inconvenient policy change. But I do feel like I've gotten into a bit of a rut. So, I will fall back on the time-honored (for smallish values of "time" and "honor") blogger technique of appealing to the audience: Ask me about something you'd like to see me talk about on the blog. I can't promise that I'll respond to every question-- see above about being busy-- but with…

Confessions of a Community College Dean: What If Colleges Ran Attack Ads? The rise of Super PACs and the glorious display of democracy that is the Republican primary season got me thinking about attack ads in other contexts. What if colleges ran attack ads? How Many Stephen Colberts Are There? - NYTimes.com he new Colbert has crossed the line that separates a TV stunt from reality and a parody from what is being parodied. In June, after petitioning the Federal Election Commission, he started his own super PAC -- a real one, with real money. He has run TV ads, endorsed (sort of) the…

My course this term is on time and timekeeping, but is also intended as a general "research methods" class. This was conceived by people in the humanities, where the idea of generic research methods makes a lot more sense than in the sciences (where there's a lot more specialization by subfield), but I'm going to try to give as general an overview of how to approach scientific research as possible in a course with no prerequisites. The following is sort of a rough sketch of a lecture for next week, on how to approach the scientific literature, so comments and suggestions are welcome. This is…

The Active Class » Blog Archive » Do they do the reading? Helping students prepa... It's a common complaint: Students don't read the book before class. It's probably equally true in the humanities, but my main experience is in the sciences. Science textbooks are dense, full of extraneous diagrams and pictures, and it's a real challenge for an introductory student to muddle their way through all that information to try to extract useful information from it. So most don't bother -- they go to class to see what content the professor thinks is important, and then use the textbook to help…

In comments to Friday's snarky post, I was chided for not engaging with the critique of standardized testing offered by Washington Post education blogger Valerie Strauss. I had intended to say more about the general topic, as there have been a bunch of much-cited articles in a similar vein crossing my RSS reader recently, but I sprained my ankle playing basketball at lunch, which kind of blew a hole in my afternoon... Looking at her posts, though, it's hard to really engage with her critique, because there's next to nothing there to engage with. In the most recent post, the closest thing to a…

Lots of people ask how SteelyKid is taking to having a younger sibling. Well, judge for yourself: This is during the Giants-Falcons playoff game this afternoon, but it's pretty typical. When both SteelyKid and The Pip are home, she's always running over to give him kisses and hugs and chatter at him. She's super excited to be a big sister, and that hasn't changed. Better yet, a few minutes after that first picture, she looked like this: And, in fact, she's still snoring cutely. We'll wake her up soonish, but for now, we're enjoying the break from constant, exhausting motion. Hope you and…