Archive for the ‘Displaced phenomena’ Category

Holiday lecture redux: Germs.

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

The theme of last year's holiday lecture, given twice at Harvard and once at Princeton, was Germs: A Detective Story. The main part of the talk was about Dr. John Snow, who proved that Cholera is a water-borne illness caused by a bacterium. From the time he began to suspect this ...

Precious metals

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

{copper, silver}, {copper, gold}, {silver, gold} are fairly well known examples of binary alloys.  Most jewelry is an alloy of these pairs, with a few other metals added in some proportion, intentional or not.  Even when you buy the pure element, there is some fraction of impurities.  A good and ...

Ig Nobel Moments of Science

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

The Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony is happening tonight at 7:15 in Sanders Theater at Harvard University.   My friend and co-conspirator Joost and I will once again don our lab coats as Performing Scientists, and perpetrate two Moments of Science. Each Moment of Science is a one minute science demonstration, presented and ...

Hey, where did the categories go?

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Must have been the upgrade to wordpress.  I liked the categories, I guess I will put them back in.  I can go over my ouevre and re-assign.  I haven't hit 100 posts yet, so its not that laborious. Physics demos today. A rigid pair of verticals and a horizontal clamped up to ...

Classes begin tomorrow? Where did the summer go?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

I could use another week of Atlantic City, NJ.  The surf off of the Chelsea Ave. beach was stellar, and I want more. The torrential rains of two days filled the area between the boardwalk and dunes with brackish pools.  The wind whipped waves moving from the left of a walkway ...