Imaginary Syllabus: Science of Sports and Games

It’s one of those days where none of the stuff I probably ought to be writing seems even slightly appealing, so instead I’m going to do something frivolous and morale-boosting, namely think out loud about an imaginary course. Despite being on sabbatical, I do still check my work email, and have caught the edges of […]

Attempted Mpemba Effect

One of my favorite modern tales of scientific discovery is the Mpemba Effect, named after Erasto Mpemba, a schoolboy in Tanzania who noticed while making ice cream that hot mix put in the freezer solidified faster than cold. This counter-intuitive result has been replicated a bunch of times, and physicists and chemists continue to debate […]

165/366: Wintry Science

It was bitterly cold over the weekend here in the Northeast, with daytime high temepratures in the single digits Fahrenheit. This has little to recommend it in terms of, you know, leaving the house, but it did provide an opportunity to try some SCIENCE! Unfortunately, I left the notepad with the data (such as it […]

The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning: My TEDxAlbany Talk

So, yesterday was my big TEDxAlbany talk. I was the first speaker scheduled, probably because I gave them the title “The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning,” so it seemed appropriate to have me talking while people were still eating breakfast… The abstract I wrote when I did the proposal mentions both quantum physics and […]