Read Science! on Dog Physics

As noted earlier, I was a guest on the Read Science! hangout on G+ earlier today. If you weren’t able to watch it live, the video is available at that link, and I’ll embed it here: There were some feedback problems with the audio for a little while– annoyingly, it only got bad once the […]

Cover for Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist

My Thursday presentation here in Houston went well, though it was a pretty small crowd. I’ll be doing it again today before running to the airport to get home. I didn’t really have an opportunity to do shameless self-promotion regarding the new book, but I did get a copy of the official cover for it, […]

Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist

I sent off the complete draft of the book-in-progress yesterday, somewhere between 12 and 36 hours ahead of my contractual deadline. Which I suppose makes it a book-in-process now, maybe. That process may still include re-writes, though, so my work probably isn’t done yet. The final draft, according to Word anyway, comes to 253 pages […]

“Eureka!” and the Problems Thereof

I’m not talking about the tv show Eureka here, which was mostly silly fluff but not especially problematic. I’m talking about the famous anecdote about Archimedes of Syracuse, who supposedly realized the principle that bears his name when slipping into a bath, distracted by a problem he had been assigned by his king. On realizing […]

On the Interconnectedness of Science

I’ve finished a first pass through all the regular chapters of the book-in-progress (in addition to those in in this progress report, there’s one more in Section 1 about antiques, and three more in Section 4, two about statistics and one about teamwork). I’m starting to do section-level proofreading, looking at blocks of chapters together. […]

Science Is Not Solitary

There was another round of the “who counts as a scientist?” debate recently, on Twitter and then on the Physics Focus blog. In between those, probably coincidentally (he doesn’t mention anything prompting it), Sean Carroll offered a three-step definition of science: Think of every possible way the world could be. Label each way an “hypothesis.” […]

Always Write the Introduction Last

Here are some excerpts from the introductory sections of the very first drafts of some book chapters: [BLAH, BLAH, BLAHBITTY BLAH] and [Introductory blather goes here] and Blah, blah, stuff, blather. There’s a good reason for this, based on the basics of scientific writing, namely that the Introduction should give the reader a rough guide […]

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: The Cover

I’m looking at an email from my editor when Emmy wanders by the computer, sniffing around just in case a crumb of food has fallen on the floor in the last five minutes. “Hey,” I say, “Come here and look at this.” “Look at what?” “This:” “It’s the cover for my new book.” “A-hem.” “OK, […]