physics
The Onion on Science
Just a list of The Onion articles about science that I find funny:
Christian Right Lobbies To Overturn Second Law Of Thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics, a fundamental scientific principle stating that entropy increases over time as organized forms decay into greater states of randomness, has come under fire from conservative Christian groups, who are [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Get your units right with LaTeX
The LaTeX package SIunits (which seems to be a descendant from the units package that I once used) addresses one of the most nagging issues in physics and engineering: getting the units well typeset. While the source is a bit cumbersome, it is quite readable:
$R=8.314$ \joule\per(\mole\usk\kelvin)
There are prefixes, so that “\mega\ohm” is ok. Many ready-to-use [...]
TED, and Steven Strogatz
This is a very interesting website: TED. A collection of interesting talks, all of them downloadable and in the public domain (CC license). There isn’t much on physics yet, and certainly not in my area. There is a very nice talk, though, by Steven Strogatz on synchronization. Strogatz is a remarkable speaker, I had the [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Natural coordinates
Here is an interesting application of Voronoi tesselations / Delaunay triangulations (see previous post The alpha shapes for another one.) Suppose you have a set of points carrying some information, let’s call them particles; the simplest case is just a scalar number representing some field whose value is only known for the particles. Then, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Thoughts on The Road to Reality
Done! It seems unbelievable, but yesterday I managed to finish The Road to Reality, by Sir Roger Penrose. I must say I liked it a lot. It has its failures, of course, and it is sometimes contentious (willingly so), specially at the end. I have made a list of things I have found outstanding in [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )La movida superficie de un líquido
(Yet another post in Spanish, since the news article is in this language! ). Se insiste mucho en esto, y por fin nos hemos decidido a tenerlo en cuenta: la divulgación de los resultados de la investigación. Aqui está La movida superficie de un líquido, que divulga nuestro último artículo en el JCP: [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Atomic dance drives melting
From APS Focus, exciting new insights on crystal melting. Melting is found to be due “to increasingly complex motions of groups of atoms acting in concert, rather than to vibrations of individual atoms or to particular atomic arrangements invoked by previous researchers.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Bob Park’s What’s New
Opinions are the author’s and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.
Thus finish Dr. Park’s weekly column, a must-read for every physicist, I my opinion. Highly critical and skeptical, and always well-informed.
One year with Dr. Penrose
It has now been one year since I started The Road to Reality by Dr. Penrose. What can I say, I love this book, but it is both dense and thick. With all the kids around, advances have been slow. I estimate completion around this summer.
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