Physics Blogging Round-Up: June

To make up for last month’s long delay in posting, I’ll knock out this month’s recap of Forbes blog posts really quickly. Also, I still have Vacation Brain, so writing anything really new isn’t in the cards…

What Should Non-Scientists Learn From Physics?: You probably won’t be surprised to hear that, in my opinion, it’s not a specific set of facts, but an attitude toward the world.

Softball Physics: How Far Can You Run While The Ball Is In The Air?: In which SteelyKid learning softball’s “tag up” rule the hard way leads to an interesting problem in physics.

How Long Would A Fidget Spinner Spin In Space?: If we’re going to have a bunch of the things in the house, I might as well get a blog post out of it…

How Laser Cooling Continues To Open Up New Possibilities For Physics: A delayed reaction to some talks at DAMOP about new research areas that are rooted in the development of laser cooling back in the 1980’s. Written while in Mexico on vacation.

The Physics Of Vacation: It’s All About Phase Transitions: Another post written in Mexico while on vacation, this one about being on vacation, specifically the way phase transitions of water have a huge impact on the experience.

Predictably enough, the post capitalizing on a recent fad is the runaway winner, traffic-wise. I was disappointed that the softball one didn’t get more traction, because I thought it was cute. Probably should’ve put “Baseball” in the title rather than “Softball,” since I mention both, and some baseball fans are louts. The two written on vacation went basically nowhere, traffic-wise; this is probably partly because I was on vacation and not able to actively social-media bomb them, partly a summer melt thing (traffic always dips in the summer) and partly a matter of topic selection. But those are the things I felt like writing about, and that’s the whole point, here…