Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist has officially been sent to the printers, so we’re at the phase of things where I don’t have anything to do but think about publicity. There are some reviews forthcoming, at least one of which I’m very happy about, but I’ll share more about that when it becomes public. I’ve […]
Category: Science Books
The Edge of the Sky by Roberto Trotta
I get a fair number of books to review, but I’m often pretty bad about writing them up in a timely manner. Of course, most of them are well over 70 pages long, which is why I’ve managed to turn around Roberto Trotta’s The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the […]
New Year, New Class: Gen Ed Relativity
The new academic year starts this week– first day of classes is Wednesday– and I’m dealing with the usual chaos associated with the influx of a new class of students. Who now look to me only a tiny bit older than SteelyKid and the Pip in the above picture (and if you think that sharing […]
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, Now With More “Quantum”
If you’re making your weekly check of the ebook editions (Kindle, Nook) of my quantum book (I’m not the only one who regularly looks at these, right?), you may have noticed a change: they’re no longer sporting the original black cover you’ll see in the right sidebar, but a new cover based on the smash […]
Ten Inessential Papers in Quantum Physics
I should really know better than to click any tweeted link with a huff.to shortened URL, but for some reason, I actually followed one to an article with the limited-reach clickbait title Curious About Quantum Physics? Read These 10 Articles!. Which is only part one, because Huffington Post, so it’s actually five articles. Three of […]
Uncertain Dots 17
After a bit of a hiatus because of scheduling issues, Rhett and I are back to talk about… stuff. Mostly summer classes, World Cup soccer, and Twitter. Also, how we’ve each gotten a blog comment from Neil deGrasse Tyson. Miscellaneous links: — My long-ago book review and Rhett’s more recent complaint about Cosmos, where we […]
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, […]
Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn by Amanda Gefter
One of the pop-physics books I’ve read recently was Amanda Gefter’s much-discussed Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. I was going to post a review of it back in March, but literally the day I was planning to write it, I got email from an editor at Physics Today asking if I had any books I’d like […]
The New SAT, Reading, Gaming, and Jargon
Given the academic circles I run in, it’s not surprising that one of the most repeated stories crossing my social media feeds yesterday had to do with the changes to the SAT. Starting in 2015, the essay section will no longer be mandatory, and they’re going to reconfigure the reading and math sections to emphasize […]