Book Writing
drorzel | January 6, 2011I've reached a point in the book-in-progress where I find myself needing to talk a little about particle physics. As this is very much not my field, this quickly led to a situation where the dog asked a question I can't answer. But, hey, that's why I have a blog with lots of smart readers...
The question is this:
What are all these extra particles for?
Or, to put it in slightly more physics-y terms: The Standard Model contains twelve material particles: six leptons (the electron, muon, and tau, plus associated neutrinos) and six quarks (up-down, strange-charm, top-bottom). The observable…
drorzel | January 6, 2011Not an exhaustive list, but since I'm noodling around with my calendar, I might as well note some of the stuff I'll be doing this year:
I'll be on a panel about international science testing at the AAAS Annual Meeting in February. This will be a different experience-- not only have I never been to a AAAS meeting before, the whole thing appears to be organized in a different manner than any meeting I have been to. I'm doing a bit of a drive-by for this-- coming in Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday evening-- but I have classes to teach.
I've been invited to give a Saturday Morning Science…
drorzel | December 31, 2010Late last year, Matthew Beckler was nice enough to make a sales rank tracker for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Changes in the Amazon page format made it stop working a while ago, though, and now Amazon reports roughly equivalent data via its AuthorCentral feature, with the added bonus of BookScan sales figures. So I've got a new source for my book sales related cat-vacuuming.
Still, there's this great big data file sitting there with thousands of hourly sales rank numbers, and I thought to myself "I ought to be able to do something else amusing with this..." And then Corky at the Virtuosi…
drorzel | December 15, 2010As previously noted, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is selling very well via the Guardian's online bookshop, among other UK venues. It's doing well enough that I might need to start referring to the original text as the American edition of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog...
There's a nice ironic twist to the Guardian aspect of it, though, in the form of a review by that paper that I hadn't previously noticed until this book business summary brought it to my attention. It's a blisteringly bad review, basically dumping hate all over the talking-dog conceit. Which,…
drorzel | December 10, 2010I'm currently working on a book about relativity, but I still spend a fair amount of time thinking about quantum issues. A lot of this won't make it into the book, because I can't assume people will have read How to Teach Physics to Your Dog before reading whatever the relativity book's title ends up being, and because explaining the quantum background would take too much space. But then, that's what I have a blog for...
Anyway, the section I was working on yesterday concerned causality and faster-than-light travel, specifically the fact that they don't play well together. Given Tuesday's…
drorzel | December 9, 2010How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog continues to sell very well. The vanity search today led me to this, screen captured from the Guardian newspaper in the UK, which sells our book in its online bookshop:
Woo! Take that, biology!
Yeah, yeah, I should be so lucky as to squeak onto the list in 150 years. Still, it's kind of a hoot to see that list.
drorzel | December 7, 2010Today is the official release date for the paperback edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I wanted to write up something cool about quantum physics to mark the occasion. I looked around the house for inspiration, and most of what we have lying around the house is SteelyKid's toys. Thus, I will now explain the physics of quantum teleportation using SteelyKid's toys:
"Wait, wait, wait... You're not seriously planning to explain something quantum without me, are you?"
"I could hardly expect to get away with that, could I. No, I'm happy to have your contributions-- the book is about…
drorzel | November 26, 2010Today is "Black Friday," the semi-ironic name given to the day after Thanksgiving when major retailers roll out Incredible! Deals! to draw shoppers in at an ungodly early hour. Personally, I don't plan to come within a mile of a mall today, but if that's what floats your boat...
Of course, if you're thinking of gifts for a person interested in science (and if you're reading this, you ought to be...), you could do a lot worse than to look at this list from GeekDad at Wired, which I'm sure you'll be shocked to notice includes How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. If your holiday shopping takes you…
drorzel | November 19, 2010I keep forgetting to mention this here, but a while back I was contacted by a tv host in California about the Goodnight Moon post. Anyway, I will be appearing via Skype tomorrow morning at 9:20 my time on the Good Day Sacramento program, to talk about bedtime stories, dog physics, and such things. Internet fame continues weird.
So, if you're an insomniac in central California, looking for something to do at 6:20 in the morning, tune in. I believe it's also available via live streaming, if you're not in the Sacramento area and want to see it live.
I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to…
drorzel | November 16, 2010Fall term classes ended yesterday, officially-- my last class was Friday-- so I'm shifting over to spend more time working on the sequel to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which involves talking to Emmy about relativity. Progress has been slower than last time, largely because the previous book was written while I was on sabbatical and before SteelyKid was born. But there's also a structural issue that's giving me some problems.
This is partly a matter of familiarity with the material-- I'm a low-energy physicist, so I've never needed to worry all that much about relativity. A bigger issue…
drorzel | November 9, 2010I haven't been doing these as regularly as I was earlier in the year, but here are a few interesting bits of news about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
LA FISICA SPIEGATA AL MIO CANE, is now available. That's the Italian edition, which Google translates to something like "Explaining Physics to My Dog." Emmy is disappointed in that translation-- she was hoping it had something to do with spaghetti, preferably with meat.
This appears to be a review of the Chinese edition, though I can't read a word of it, and Google Translate isn't really up to the task, rendering one whole paragraph as "…
drorzel | November 4, 2010I can't resist interrupting the relatively productive day I'm having working on the new book to point you to Conversación de fÃsica con mi perro, the Spanish-language edtion of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which sports this spiffy cover:
I haven't seen a physical copy of this yet, but the vanity search turned up this blog post, which just reproduces the cover copy, but does offer a sample chapter as a PDF. So, you know, if you want to try it before you buy it, there you go...
This also explains the phone call I got yesterday from a journalist in Spain, who wanted to ask me about…
drorzel | October 28, 2010The Times Higher Education magazine in the UK, that is. They ran a review of my book a couple of weeks ago, which I've only just noticed:
The approach is quite entertaining. The tone of the book is chatty and contains some truly awful puns involving dogs, which, if you can stand them, make it an attractive and lively read. However, don't be fooled - Emmy is no ordinary dog. She can reason with the informed leaps one may expect from a physics undergraduate, despite peppering her conversation with "squirrel", "bunny" and "chase".
If you're in the UK, the edition the review refers to is on sale…
drorzel | October 24, 2010Between my long-ago high-school French and Google Translate, I can tell that this is a good review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It does note, though, that reading the book requires knowledge of English to understand it, which is a problem. And, as far as I know, French translation rights haven't been sold yet... French publishers, je vous regarde.
In other foreign-edition news, we've sold German and Turkish rights, so there will be editions in those languages eventually. Emmy was very happy to hear that the book will be published in Turkey, though that was mostly a case of preposition…
drorzel | October 21, 2010I haven't been flogging the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge as hard this year as in past year, but I do want to post a reminder that the challenge is ongoing. If you donate, the money will go to help deserving school kids; if that's not enough, it can also earn you cool stuff like:
The largest individual donor will get a signed copy of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and the chance to have their pet appear in the sequel. Want to read about your companion animal moving at relativistic speeds? Make a big donation (current leader is just over $370), and you can get it.
Too cash-strapped to buy…
drorzel | October 18, 2010As you may or may not be aware, we are once again in the middle of a DonorsChoose fundraiser to support public school students and teachers. The good news is, the Uncertain Principles entry for the 2010 Challenge is in second place among ScienceBlogs blogs with $373 in donations thus far; the bad news it that more than half of that money is from the initial contribution I made when I set the challenge up.
We've done much better than this in the past, but I realize these are tough economic times, and people may not have as much disposable cash to give to charity. I was thinking, though, about…
drorzel | October 14, 2010Emmy and I are in Buffalo today, after a long drive last night, made longer by the NY Thruway authorities decidin to randomly sprinkle lane closures along the westbound portion of I-90. They also made the sadistic move of putting on the "tune to this radio station for information" flashers before the big back-up, and then playing only a recording saying that they were updating the messages on the information network. For at least an hour. Nice work, Thruway idiots. That was positively Pennsylvanian.
Anyway, we're here in scenic Buffalo, where it isn't snowing yet, so don't ask. Which means I…
drorzel | October 10, 2010Oddly enough, it turns out that writing a book with a rambunctious toddler in the house is a much slower process than writing a book pre-toddler. Imagine that.
Anyway, as I did during the writing stages of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, I thought I would post occasional updates on the progress of writing Book 2: What to Tell Your Dog About Einstein. In addition to letting my readers know what I'm doing instead of blogging a bunch, it will help remind me that progress is being made, even if there are days when it feels like I'm not accomplishing anything.
Chapter 1: Relative motion and…
drorzel | October 7, 2010Between travel and general work craziness, I completely forgot to note that the UK version of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has gone on sale:
The title for this edition is How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, and the vanity search keeps turning up mentions to it in the Guardian Bookshop, so I guess they like their dog physics with extra quantum in Britain. Anyway, if you've been waiting and wondering when there would be a version with fewer idiomatic Americanisms, it's here, and available from the usual sources.
This brings the in-print edition tally to five, that I know of: the…
drorzel | September 23, 2010One of the things I've been stressed about lately is next week, when I'm making a trip to the South, specifically Georgia and Alabama. As I mentioned here earlier, the original inspiration was a get-together with friends from college for the Florida-Alabama football game next Saturday, but it seems a shame to go all that way and not do something book-related, so I have arranged to give four talks in two days. Two of these are research colloquia, but the other two are public lectures that might be of interest to readers of this blog or How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
First, on Wednesday,…