In the same basic vein as yesterday’s post about thermodynamics, the following poll contains a list of physicists who are not household names, but who made significant contributions to the science of optics. Which of them is the best? Which of these physicists from the field of optics was the best?(polls)
Month: July 2009
Macroscopic Quantum Behavior in SeedMagazine.com
The Corporate Masters have launched a “featured blogger” program, asking individual ScienceBloggers to comment on news articles from the main site, and publishing the responses with the magazine piece. I just did one on new quantum experiments, which was posted today. The news article is Supersizing Quantum Behavior by Veronique Greenwood. My piece is Reconciling […]
Thermodynamics Smackdown Explained
So, yesterday featured a silly poll about underappreciated old-timey physicists. Who are these people, and why should you know about them? Taking them in reverse order of the voting:
PNAS: Jon Moulton, Small Company Biologist
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This […]
Links for2009-07-29
The Republic of T. » Sotomayor & The Vulcan Standard, Pt. 2 “It hit me like a slap in the face. It sounded familiar, but different. To me, this fictional family was white. But in the time and place they occupied on the page they weren’t “white enough.” “Oh my God!” I exclaimed. My husband, […]
Philosophy of Science Poll: Emotions
While I’m stealing post ideas from Twitter, here’s another poll question, thanks to Eric Weinstein, who wrote earlier: And @CameronNeylon, when you write “Good science means not having an (emotional) allegiance to any theory surely?” I must strongly disagree. This position results from the luxury of living on the far side of an adaptive valley […]
Historical Physicist Smackdown: Thermodynamics Edition
The question of who is the greatest physicist of the physicists who are household names– Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, etc.– has been debated thousands of times, and will undoubtedly be debated thousands of times in the future. What isn’t as often discussed is the ranking of physicists who aren’t in that rare group of household names– […]
PNAS: Katherine Porter, Educational Content Editor
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This […]
Religion Leads to Education
There’s an interesting report at Inside Higher Ed today on a study of religiosity and college. Some of the results will probably come as a surprise to many people around ScienceBlogs: # The odds of going to college increase for high school students who attend religious services more frequently or who view religion as more […]
Links for2009-07-28
kate_nepveu: Worldcon: online jerkitude “I’m trying to come up with a list of bedrock principles that apply across all online contexts, and I keep getting bogged down in my lawyer tendencies. So what would you say are the fundamental, applies-anywhere minimum requirements of human decency when it comes to online interactions?” (tags: internet culture society […]