I thought I had mentioned it on Twitter enough, but as several people were surprised to see me last night, it’s probably worth saying more prominently: I’m at the Science Online 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC this week. This is making me tremendously popular with my class, who are taking an exam tonight… Anyway, if […]
Month: January 2013
Cute Kid Update
It’s been a good while since I did any Cute Kid Blogging, due to excessive busy-ness. There’s big news among the younger residents of Chateau Steelypips, though: SteelyKid lost one of her front teeth the other day: That gap? Wasn’t there on Friday morning. Lest you think we’re horrible people who let her run headfirst […]
Physics Is About Rules, Not Facts
While in the library looking for something else, I noticed a book called The Trouble with Science by Robin Dunbar, whose description made it sound very much on point for my current project: In The Trouble with Science, Robin Dunbar asks whether science really is unique to Western culture, even to humankind. He suggests that […]
Blast From the Past: Letter to and From Luis Alvarez
I have mentioned before that when I was a kid, I wrote a letter to Luis Alvarez, the 1968 Nobel laureate in Physics, asking some questions about his theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs, which had been featured in a NOVA special. I got a very nice letter back from him, very graciously […]
Proving Bethe Wrong: On Theory Inspiring Experiment
As research for the work-in-progress, I recently read Luis Alvarez‘s autobiography, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist, which contains a passage that I was reminded of last night while reading another book, that seems like an amusing follow-up to yesterday’s rant about theory and experiment. This is from the end of the chapter where he joined […]
Experiments Are Not Afterthoughts
There’s been a bunch of talk recently about a poll on quantum interpretations that showed physicists badly divided between the various interpretations– Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, etc.– a result which isn’t actually very surprising. Sean Carroll declares that the summary plot is “The Most Embarrassing Graph in Modern Physics, which I think is a bit of an […]
How Do You Make Negative Temperatures, Anyway?
Last week’s post talked about the general idea of negative temperature, with reference to this much-talked-about Science paper (which also comes in a free arxiv version from which the figures used here are taken). I didn’t go into the details of how they made a negative temperature gas, though, and as it’s both very clever […]
What Does “Negative Temperature” Mean, Anyway?
The most talked-about physics paper last week was probably Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees of Freedom (that link goes to the paywalled journal; there’s also a free arxiv preprint from which the above figure is taken). It’s a catchy but easily misinterpreted title– Negative absolute temperature! Below Absolute Zero! Thermodynamics is wrong!– that obscures […]
The Psychology and Improbability of Shuffle Play
Kate and I went down to New York City (sans kids, as my parents were good enough to take SteelyKid and The Pip for the weekend) this weekend, because Kate had a case to argue this morning, and I needed a getaway before the start of classes today. We hit the Rubin Museum of Art, […]
Faitheist by Chris Stedman
I started following Chris Stedman on Twitter thanks to a recommendation from Josh Rosenau citing him as someone who promotes atheism without being contemptous of religious people. He was, indeed, a source of religion-and-politics material that I found congenial, and when I noticed he was flogging a forthcoming book, I picked up a copy, which […]