Pictures
drorzel | December 27, 2007One of the highlights of this year's Christmas haul: knitted cephalopods!
That's an octopus and a giant squid, knitted from spun awesome by my sister's partner. The tentacles have pipe cleaners (or something) in them, so they're poseable.
They're currently sitting on top of the tv, but they're not all that stable there. We'll find them a more permanent home after the holidays, when we reclaim our fireplace's mantel from the holiday cards.
Thanks, Anastasia!
drorzel | December 25, 2007The final installment from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! for this year:
This is a Santa Claus figure walking his dog. Which, of course, is a reminder to everyone of the importance of talking to your pets about SCIENCE!!!
Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it. The rest of you, have a great Tuesday.
drorzel | December 21, 2007This one may not look like much, but it covers a lot of ground for the Tree of SCIENCE!!!:
This ornament is built around a copper plaque, and copper is a very good conductor, which means it includes an element of solid state physics.
The copper in the plaque is from the roof of the Library of Congress, which means that this stands for the publication and dissemination of scientific information. SCIENCE!!! can't function properly without wide distribution of results. Hey to Bora.
Finally, the plaque is embossed with the quote "Too low they build who build beneath the stars," which again is a…
drorzel | December 20, 2007Today's Tree of SCIENCE!!! ornaments salute this here series of tubes:
On the right side of this picture, you see two little clothespin soldiers in sailor outfits with semaphore flags. These guys represent communications technology.
Communications technology, from crude semaphore all the way up through the Internet, is both an outgrowth of SCIENCE!!! and essential to it. Particularly today, when SCIENCE!!! is an international endeavor, it's impossible to do science if you can't communicate with your collaborators and disseminate your results.
As a special bonus, to the left side of the…
drorzel | December 19, 2007Another cold December day, another ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! This one's for the doctors in the house:
That's a little elf guy smoking a pipe, and he represents the science of public health.and epidemiology.
I'm a little dubious about some of the more extravagant claims made regarding the dangers of secondhand smoke, but there's really no denying that one of the most important and beneficial societal transformations in my lifetime has been the implementation of smoking bans in restaurants and workplaces, and the decrease in the acceptability of public smoking. You don't really…
drorzel | December 18, 2007Today's ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is in honor of the cold water dripping into our kitchen cabinet yesterday:
That's a glass icicle, with bonus dramatic shadows. If you're a homeowner, you might think that this stands for ice damming, but this is about SCIENCE!!! not property mishaps. This ornament stands for phase transitions.
Phase transitions are a big part of physics and chemistry. Exactly what constitutes a "phase of matter" is a little murky, and seems to proceed on a sort of Damon Knight/ Potter Stewart rule, but transitions between phases are a rich area of study. Solid to…
drorzel | December 17, 2007A quick photo poll question: Which of these statues seen on the street in Japan is more disturbing? This chubby nude saxophonist from Himeji:
Or this small child riding a giant carp from Takayama:
Leave your answer in the comments. You can only pick one.
drorzel | December 17, 2007I've been scanting the physics content so far with the Tree of SCIENCE!!! posts, so here's one from my own branch of science:
This one is a little Santa/ elf guy with a one-man-band rig, which of course stands for the venerable science of acoustics.
There's lots of great physics material in this one. The tone of the bell that he's carrying will be determined by resonance of sound waves inside the cavity of the bell, and the normal modes of waves on a drumhead is a rich and fascinating topic. The mathematics used to describe these situations is the same basic mathematical apparatus used to…
drorzel | December 14, 2007Here's where things on the Tree of SCIENCE!!! start to get more interesting, and somewhat more obscure:
Yes, that's a small wooden Christmas tree ornament hanging on our full-size Christmas tree. What's this have to do with SCIENCE!!!? Well, obviously, it represents recursion.
recursion, as you know Bob, is an extremely useful technique in computer programming, whereby you define a function in terms of itself. The classic example of this is the factorial function:
n! = 1*2*3*...*(n-1)*(n)
You can write a program to calculate the factorial of a number by defining a function f(n) that has two…
drorzel | December 13, 2007Today's ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! might seem like a repeat, but it's not:
I know, you're saying "Dude, you already did life sciences..." True, but this glittery polar bear doesn't stand for life sciences, he stands for climate science and environemntal science.
This little guy had an icecap, but somebody be stealin' his icecap. That's why he looks so sad. That, or he's just out of Coke. Tough call.
I'm not sure where we got this one-- I think it was a gift. It's a little awkward as an ornament, because the hook is not above the center of mass, so it hangs a little crooked, but it'…
drorzel | December 12, 2007Today's picture from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is a two-fer:
That's a glass star and a wooden crescent moon, and together, obviously, they stand for astronomy and planetary science. Really, that's so easy and obvious that I don't need to say any more.
drorzel | December 11, 2007Here's the first of this year's series of pictures proving that our Christmas tree is all about SCIENCE!!! (which, for the record, needs to be said like it's in a Thomas Dolby song). Some of these will eventually get kind of obscure, but we'll start with an easy one:
This little guy, obviously, stands for the life sciences and evolution.
Why evolution? Well, because he's an iguana, and they're found in the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin did all that work, back in the day.
Also, we got him (her? it's hard to tell...) at the Darwin exhibit at the science museum in Boston.
You can't see it…
drorzel | December 10, 2007Chateau Steelypips presents the 2007 Christmas Tree of SCIENCE!!!:
OK, it may not look all that science-y-- nary a Tesla coil to be seen-- but just like last year, this year's tree is all about the science. I'll be explaining how in a series of picture posts over the next week or so.
So, well, stay tuned...
drorzel | December 5, 2007The building where my office is is one of those 60's era brick buildings with lots of basically identical little offices arranged along indistinguishable hallways. Tenured professors are known to get lost in there trying to find specific offices. To make it a little easier, some of us decorate our doors:
The key identifying the numbered items is below the fold, but as this is a fairly general phenomenon in academia, I thought I'd try making this a Bonus Photo Edition Dorky Poll:
What's on your office door?
(If you don't have your own office, then what's decorating your workspace? If you're…
drorzel | November 25, 2007... or, Emmy's Best Thanksgiving Ever!
We did the traditional turkey-and-trimmings dinner Saturday with both sets of parents. Again, we brined the turkey overnight, following the Good Eats recipe, and other than a small glitch with the thermometer placement, everything went very well. The turkey was nicely roasted, moist, and juicy.
And that's where the problem started. Or, if you're the dog, that's where this started to be the best Thanksgiving EVER...
Neither Kate nor I really eat gravy, and it has the reputation of being fiddly to make, so we didn't do anything with the juices that…
drorzel | November 15, 2007It's been a while since I did one of these, so here's your book progress update for the last couple of weeks, with the obligatory dog picture. This is probably the halfway point for the first draft, more or less.
Introduction
Current Revision: 1
Total Words: 430 (dialogue only)
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 7
Total Words: 4,499
Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation
Current Revision: 2
Total Words: 4,801
Chapter 4: The Many-Worlds Interpretation
Current Revision: 3
Total Words: 4,869
Chapter 5…
drorzel | November 3, 2007I've gotten away from posting Japan pictures, but here's what may be my favorite warning sign ever:
In case you have trouble reading the text in the image:
Stranger whosoever thou art and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary remember thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages.
This is the Temple of BHUDDA [sic] and the gate of the Eternal and should therefore be entered with reverence.
I think that's fantastic.
Of course, the tourist shop selling the glow-in-the-dark Buddha keychains was about fifty feet away. Outside the gate, though-- I guess you take…
laelaps | October 29, 2007
Female Snow Leopard twins born last year at the Bronx Zoo.
When I initially started posting pictures on my blog, I didn't know if anyone would have anything to say about my pictures. I frequent zoos, museums, and aquariums, usually shooting between 200 and 600 shots per trip, the handful of good shots making their way onto the internet. I've been certainly pleasantly surprised, therefore, to see all the positive remarks made about my pictures, especially since I don't really have any idea what I'm doing. Still, many of you have asked how I have been able to get the kind of shots I've…
drorzel | October 24, 2007Here's the crew I spent this past Saturday morning with:
The guys who are younger than I am are a bunch of students from the local chapter of Sigma Phi. The one guy older than I am is from a volunteer group who help maintain the local bike path. The stone wall behind us is part of a lock from the Erie Canal, built around 1839. We were there clearing away the bushes and weeds that overgrow the site every summer, as part of a restoration project organized by a colleague from the History department.
That's right, I spent my Saturday clearing brush. I feel all Presidential. I may just bomb…
drorzel | October 20, 2007As noted a little while ago, ScienceBlogs has recently redesigned the channel pages on the front page, and they now include images supplied by the bloggers. For example, the doomsday weapon photo that currently graces the Physical Science page is a picture of my lab.
Now, any idiot can take pictures of cute fuzzy animals, but physics pictures are a little harder to come by. So, the corporate masters are soliciting pictures from you, the readers of this blog:
It's not too hard: the image needs to be at least 465 pixels wide. Readers should send their photos to photos@scienceblogs.com. They…