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Tag Archives: physics

May the weak force be with you

Thursday, August 5, 2010

I follow science news the way normal dudes follow sports. If you’re geekily inclined like me, you may have heard that the particle physics people are getting closer to producing the Higgs boson. You may have wondered what that is exactly, and why you should care. The science press has nicknamed the Higgs “the God [...]

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Here comes the sun

Friday, April 23, 2010

Today in the NY Times there’s an article about NASA’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory. Check out this amazing video of the sun in action. The sun was on my mind today anyway, it being so nice and cloudless outside. But days like today also cause me anxiety. I’m a fair-haired sunburn-prone type, and my dad [...]

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Auto-tune the cosmos

Friday, September 25, 2009

Not much context to offer on this except that I saw it on Wayne Marshall’s Twitter, it has Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, and it’s beyond delightful.

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How musical instruments work

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

There are a lot of different musical instruments out there. Just about all of them share four basic components: a harmonic oscillator, a source of noise, a control surface for modulation, and a resonator.

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Wow chicka wah-wah

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Say “oooh” as in “noodle.” Then say “aaah” as in “park.” When you say “oooh” your mouth is more closed, with less resonating space and a smaller opening. This configuration blocks the higher overtones of your voice. When you say “aaah” your jaw and lips open, creating more resonating space and letting more high overtones [...]

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Human technology is part of nature

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Humans are animals.  Our tools are extensions of our bodies into the environment, like beavers and beaver ponds, coral and coral reefs, plants and oxygen. We’re unusual in the extent of our bodies’ impact on our environment, but plenty of other organism shape their environment to suit their needs. Technology is part of our extended [...]

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So what is the big deal with this Einstein guy?

Thursday, May 21, 2009

I’m a humanities guy, but I’ve never lost my childhood love of math and science. I’m looking forward to the Large Hadron Collider being fired up next year the way normal male Americans look forward to the NBA playoffs. I like to be an informed fan, and since Einstein is the Michael Jordan of scientists, [...]

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How transistors think

Saturday, March 28, 2009

The parts of the computer that do the “thinking” are mostly made of little electronic switches called transistors. If you connect two wires to a transistor, you can use the voltage on one wire to control the voltage on the other. What’s especially handy for engineering purposes is that the presence or absence of a [...]

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Tuning the quantum guitar

Friday, March 20, 2009

In high school science class, you probably saw a picture of an atom that looked like this: The picture shows a stylized atom, a nucleus with red protons and blue neutrons, surrounded by three grey electrons. It’s an attractive and iconic image, and it would make a great logo. It’s also misleading, and in some [...]

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The more I learn about electricity, the less I understand it

Thursday, February 19, 2009

There’s an episode of Family Guy where they go to the science museum, and under a banner reading ‘The Miracle Of Electricity’ is an old man turning an ordinary household lamp on and off. When he sees the crowd staring at him, he says, “What? You don’t think this is a miracle? When I saw [...]

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