Science
rallain | January 12, 2009I am getting ready for classes. One class I am teaching is a physics course for elementary education majors. I really enjoy this class. There is hardly any math and the students learn by doing some experiments and then creating models. These models are then shared and discussed among the class. The basic points of the class are:
Help students learn the nature of science by doing sciency things.
Learn some science content by doing stuff (instead of listening to me talk about stuff)
Learn about how to teach science in elementary schools.
Explore the nature of learning.
I didn't really…
drorzel | January 12, 2009There was a mix-up in textbook ordering for this term (entirely my fault), and the books for my modern physics course were not in the bookstore when the term started. I made a spare copy available in the interim, and also half-jokingly suggested buying it from Amazon rather than waiting for the bookstore to get them in. After saying that, I went to Amazon, and found that the book in question sells for $150. "That can't be right," I thought. And, indeed, it's not-- the bookstore sells its copies at the list price of $180.
I had no idea the books were that expensive, and now I feel guilty about…
awild | January 12, 2009
Aphaenogaster cockerelli, Arizona
Here's a new study in Current Biology from Adrian Smith, Bert Hoelldobler, and Juergen Liebig:
Abstract: Cheaters are a threat to every society and therefore societies have established rules to punish these individuals in order to stabilize their social system [1â3]. Recent models and observations suggest that enforcement of reproductive altruism (policing) in hymenopteran insect societies is a major force in maintaining high levels of cooperation [4â6]. In order to be able to enforce altruism, reproductive cheaters need to be reliably identified. Strong…
pharyngula | January 11, 2009
We're one step closer to self-sustaining chemical replicators, similar to what would have existed a few billion years ago, before true cells evolved. Lincoln and Joyce have created a couple of relatively simple molecules that assemble themselves from even simpler precursors in a test tube.
It's not as straightforward as the simplest scheme one might imagine. The simplest model would be for a single enzyme, E, to catalyze its own assembly from two smaller precursors, A and B. This formula would lead to a test tube full of A and B to be quickly converted to a test tube full of nearly nothing…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
awild | January 10, 2009A few months ago I mentioned the Lost Lady Bug Project.
It seems they've updated the site so that visitors can now view all the photo submissions. Pretty cool.
bioephemera | January 8, 2009Ok - so Nancy Drew was never into string theory. But parents and teachers, take note: the Magnet Lab website at FSU mantains a list of books that incorporate painless, plot-relevant science lessons:
Take as an example the below excerpt from one of our featured books, Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster. Enterprising middle school teachers could use this story as a jumping-off point for a discussion about superconductors. "Don't you see?" said the Professor. "It's a superconductor."
"But that's incredible!" Dr. Fenster said. "At room temperature?"
"So it appears. There's no other explanation."
"…
drorzel | January 8, 2009A couple years ago, we revised the General Education requirements at the college to require all students to take a "Sophomore Research Seminar" in their second year. These classes are supposed to be writing-intensive, and introduce students to the basics of academic research. The specified course components are pretty heavily slanted toward the humanities-- library searches, primary vs. secondary sources, and so on-- and don't really map that well onto research practices in the sciences.
A colleague in engineering managed to do a really interesting project-based class, though, and since…
drorzel | January 8, 2009Over at the theoretical physics beach party, Moshe is talking about teaching quantum mechanics, specifically an elective course for upper-level undergraduates. He's looking for some suggestions of special topics:
The course it titled "Applications of quantum mechanics", and is covering the second half of the text by David Griffiths, whose textbooks I find to be uniformly excellent. A more accurate description of the material would be approximation methods for solving the Schrodinger equation. Not uncommonly in the physics curriculum, when the math becomes more demanding the physics tends to…
rallain | January 8, 2009I am going to tell a story and then calculate the probability of part of it happening. Really, it's just an excuse for me to put this online (since no one got hurt).
My parents have this house on a lake, but it is really hilly. There is a dock down there, but it is like a bajillion stairs to get there. Good for exercise, bad for carrying a cooler full of beer (and ice). I don't know where he found about it, but my Dad got these guys from Minnesota to install this tram thingy. Basically it's a little train car with benches that rides down on two rails to the dock below. The thing is…
drorzel | January 8, 2009In the "uncomfortable questions" comment thread, Thony C. suggests:
You say you're teaching "modern physics" so how about a running commentary on the stuff your teaching?
That's a good suggestion, and I'll start posting some sketchy reports soon. First, though, Bora asks:
What is un-modern physics?
Roughly speaking, physics gets divided into "Classical Physics" and "Modern Physics," with the dividing line coming right around 1900.
"Classical Physics" basically covers fields that were well established before 1900: Newtonian Dynamics, Electricity and Magnetism, most of Thermodynamics, most of…
drorzel | January 8, 2009My senior thesis student this year came to my office today to ask a question as he's starting to work on writing his thesis. I've given him copies of the theses of the last couple of students to work in my lab, and asked him to start on a draft of the background sections. He was worried that he wouldn't be able to make the background sections sufficiently distinct from the corresponding sections in the earlier theses.
This is a sort of tricky point when it comes to issues of academic honesty in science. Scientific questions always have definite right and wrong answers, and that limits the…
drorzel | January 7, 2009In response to the call for uncomfortable questions, Jason Failes asks:
What's the best evidence for the Big Bang theory?
The more I read about it (25 years ago to present), the more contrived, ad hoc, and retro-dictive it seems.
At this point, what would falsify the Big Bang theory?
What would falsify the Big Bang? Jesus Christ his own self turning up at the American Astronomical Society meeting, turning water to wine, and giving a talk titled "What Big Bang? How I Hoaxed You All."
OK, that's pretty flippant, but my understanding of the matter is that the evidence supporting the current…
denialism | January 7, 2009
Not infrequently, science butts heads with culture as the data scientists collect about issues of the day may conflict with cultural perceptions and deeply-held beliefs. Attitudes and perceptions about homosexuality are, not surprisingly, a source of denialism as certain overvalued ideas about sexuality are being challenged with our deeper understanding of human sexual desire. For one, homosexuality is not a choice, despite all attempts to reprogram or suppress homosexual desires, the desires do not go away. One might even hypothesize the attempts to repress or disparage such a…
bioephemera | January 6, 2009Neuroskeptic has written a great post evaluating the much-hyped 2008 study that showed people will more readily accept information if a neurosciency-explanation is attached - even if the neuroscience is irrelevant.
If this effect is real, it has big implications for those of us involved in science/health communication - when to use this advantage, and when to eschew it? (Especially when we're trying to explain neuroimaging studies. . ?) And what is the source of this bias - mass media's ongoing love affair with neuroscientific explanations and pretty brain pictures? Or something else entirely?
awild | January 6, 2009
Odontomachus meinerti trap-jaw ant, Argentina
One perk of being at a research university is the opportunity to shoot the various study organisms on campus. These subjects are interesting- they have to be, or they wouldn't be studied- and when the research goes public I get the chance to disseminate my photographs with the science media outlets that cover the story.
Among my favorite campus animals is the Odontomachus trap-jaw ant, one of the focal taxa in Andy Suarez's lab. The researchers are looking at the biomechanics of the jaw, one of the fastest recorded appendages among all…
drorzel | January 4, 2009The posts selected for the 2009 edition of The Open Laboratory, collecting the best writing on science blogs for the year, have been announced. My We Are Science post made the list, which is nice.
Amusingly, this showed up in my inbox at the same time that the ScienceBlogs front page is featuring this Bloggingheads episode featuring George Johnson and John Horgan. Johnson, you might recall, riled everybody up a couple of weeks ago with a bit of a dyspeptic rant about science bloggers compared to science journalists. They spend a good fifteen or twenty minutes on the topic again this week, and…
grrlscientist | January 4, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
pharyngula | January 4, 2009
Spiders are amazingly sophisticated animals, and probably the premiere complex adaptation of modern spiders is the ability to spin silk. They have multiple internal glands that can produce multiple kinds of silk — webs contain different kinds, from structural strands to adhesive strands, and other kinds are used for spinning egg cases and for wrapping prey — and they are sprayed out through small spigots mounted on swiveling spinnerets, which are modified opisthosomal (abdominal) limbs. Obviously, these detailed features did not spontaneously appear all at once, but had to have evolved…
awild | January 3, 2009In the comments, Eric Eaton makes an observation:
Iâm left wondering (just a little) why Alex has such a beef with Dr. Wilson. This is not the first post taking a jab at Wilson, so while Alex makes an excellent point, Iâm also sensing some underlying issues hereâ¦.
Eric is right there's an issue. It is one many myrmecologists, especially systematists, have been tip-toeing around for a while now.
The short version is that Wilson is no longer at the leading edge of myrmecology. As he has fallen out of step with the practicing research community, his public ant commentary is increasingly at…