Physics Posts
Here are links to the posts I've made explaining various bits of physics. This is fairly complete, but as the list is hand-generated, I wouldn't stake anything important on it remaining that way. Links are posted in chronological order, with newer stuff at the bottom. Yes, that's un-blog-like. Sue me.
- What's With the Name? An explanation of the Uncertainty Principle, and those little equations over in the links bar.
- Alive, Dead, or Bloody Furious. The beginning of an explanation of quantum computing.
- Silicon Quantum Computing? The end of the explanation, and an assessment of a few potential quantum computing systems.
- Keep Dropping the Chalk. An essay about testing well-established theories.
- Geek Taxonomy. A guide to some different sub-fields of physics.
- Hey, Ref! An explanation of the peer review system in physics.
- Spooky Interaction at a Distance. An explanation of "entangled states" in quantum physics, leading up to:
- Beam Me a Photon, Scotty and The Transporters Aren't Working. Again., which explain "quantum teleportation" experiments.
- You Talkin' to Me? A discussion of different kinds of science talks.
- The More Demos, the Better. Audience-amazing tricks you can do with liquid nitrogen.
- Not Just Air Conditioning the Laser Lab and Clever Tricks and Cooling. A two-part explanation of laser cooling.
- Entropy Always Increases, Especially in My Office. An explanation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, leading up to:
- Tractor Beams and Thermodynamics. A description of an experiment to test the Second Law of Thermodynamics on a microscopic scale.
- The Drexler Continuum. My skeptical views on nanotechnology.
- May There Be No Moaning of the Bar When I Choose Answer "C". Liminal rituals in physics.
- Shut Up and Calculate, Already. Scattered thoughts on the character of physical law.
- They Gots Alllll the Money. Grants and grant-writing.
- Don't Fix What Ain't Broke. Thoughts on the permanence of temporary solutions.
- Lying to Children. The pedagogical problems of trying to distill abstract theories down into comprehensible storylines.
- Special Relativity, Migraines, Linked in Assistant Professors. A headache-inducing paradox from Special Relativity.
- All Horses Have an Infinite Number of Legs. Why common sense is like a joke math proof, and how Relativity fixes the problem.
- Crisis of Schadenfreude. Is there a crisis in physics, and whose fault is it?
- Fads, Fallacies, and Amusing Television, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Programs About UFO Aliens.
- Fraud. The sordid tale of Jan Hendrik Schoen.
- Question 2 (90 pts): Which Tire? The black art of designing exams and quizzes.
- In the Eye of the Beholder. What are the most beautiful experiments in physics?
- Show All Work For Full Credit. An exam about relativity.
- Albert Einstein vs. Michael Jordan. The Nobel Prize and sports geekery.
- Everything's Relative, Especially in My Family and What's in a Name. An attempt to explain Special Relativity.
- Show All Work for Partial Credit. An exam about basic quantum mechanics.
- I Said, Are You Talkin' to Me? The difficulties of getting good undergraduate-level colloquia.
- Kooks Everywhere. The joys of getting letters from crazy people.
- The (Back of the) Envelope Please. The fine art of crude approximations.
- Master of None. A list of the unwritten job qualifications of a working physicist.
- Show All Work for Partial Credit, and Have a Nice Break. A final exam on modern physics.
- Ask Dr. Principles. Different problem-solving methods, and how (or whether) to teach them.
- Ask Dr. Principles. An example of a "Fermi number" calculation.
- I Recommend Asking Someone Else. Recommendation letters: how to write them, and whether to write them for creationists.
- One Ordinary Day, Hold the Peanuts. A very long day in the life of a physics professor.
- Science is Hard. The role of writing in science, and why it's hard to teach.
- Fifteen Minute Mechanics. Everything you need to know about Newtonian Physics, in one convenient lecture.
- Nerves of Jell-O. Stage fright in science.
- Assume a Spherical Cow. The art and science of simplifying assumptions.
- Rainy Days. Water + Physics Lab Equipment = Trouble.
- Story Is a Force of Nature. The importance of narrative in putting a lecture together.
- Typical Data Massage. How not to lie with statistics.
- Searching for a Heart of Gold. Probability and parallel universes.
- Howdya Spell "Biiillyuns?". The role of colorful analogies in explaining the scale of the Universe.
- Subatomic Botany. The particles that make up the universe, and why it's hard to keep them straight.
- Making Quarks Out of Nothing at All. E = m c2 and how particle accelerators can create strange matter out of ordinary protons.
- If You Think That's Bad, You Should Hear the Simple Explanation... Simplifications, and how they make life difficult.
- Look Closer, and It's Easy to Trace... How to figure out what happened in a collision by looking at particle tracks (part 1).