In condensed matter physics, there is an area called turbulence that has wide practical application: weather, golfing, navigation, bridges, building subs, boats, and planes.
(Most of you know turbulence from those random unexplained dips you get when your plane is in flight.)
But for theoreticians, turbulence is different.
In 1941, some Russian guy wrote a theory for the [...]
A classmate from college, Dr. Frank Ling, is giving an internal talk at CNET:
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
Frank works as a PostDoc at Berkeley on green technology, guest blogs on Cleantech, and does the radio program, Berkeley Groks, with another classmate of mine, Charles Lee.
Great people, both of them.
Change the world.
In the early 90’s, random dot stereograms made really popular geek posters.
I haven’t a clue what this really looks like. click here to view larger. You can view more and get other stereogram paraphernalia here.
To view them, you had to unfocus your eyes a bit and then stare at infinity. I could never do this [...]
Antibiotics are a pretty amazing thing.
But in my life, I’ve never seen it work, only read about it in books such as All Creatures Great and Small or heard stories about how the amazing things that happened when my grandfather was a pediatrician.
It’s now more of a preventative, or to make our cattle a little [...]
The solution to the greatest paradoxes of the twentieth century physics is the realization that the observer cannot be separated from the experimental design.
General Relativity? The observer can’t tell the difference between gravity and an accelerating reference frame.
Maxwell’s Demon? Even the observer’s computation cannot be separated from the physical system that implements it.
Quantum Mechanics? Observation [...]
19th century German neurophysiologists successfully map out the brain after a transcontinental flight
Researching my last article was amusing, but doing so made me realize an error in something I said last month.
I didn’t recognize someone I should have because I was jetlagged and hungry. She was non-plussed with my behavior and threatened to “take me [...]
Text reads:
Dear person-with-vaguely-Russian-sounding-name,
Fifty years ago today, the Soviet Union threw a beeping metal sphere into low earth orbit scaring the be-jesus out of every American and touching off the Space Race which gave us 100+ TV channels, GPS tracking, orbital mind control lasers, Google Earth, and Tang—all of which, by some coincidence, scare the be-jesus [...]
Twitter has all of the sleaziness of stalking with none of the messy work of having to actually leave my desk. But I found a dark underside to it: it makes stalking way too easy. Sometimes I get caught in my laziness:
Out in the real world, a girl comes up to me. “Hey!”
Me: “Hi. I’m [...]
I got an e-mail from a fellow ’techer the other day because he saw my last post on his Plaxo Pulse.
It made me remember how I ended up in physics—the the real reason.
What’s on one of Andrei’s shirt always gives me a laugh
[Being a physics major after the jump.]
I open wide our refrigerator door and start the stare, “Hmm, what to have today?” Okay, what’s the worst thing to be having at 8 in the morning?
“I usually get the Talking Rain. It’s the only thing in there good for you.”
“It’s all bad for you. Haven’t heard of dihydrogen monoxide?”
“What’s that?”
Wait for it.
“Is that [...]
