Shut up and listen to your students
Are conventional lectures the best method of teaching scientific concepts? After all, we’ve been using the same lecture model for hundreds of years —...
Category: Science
Gnome Physics
All subatomic particles — electrons, protons, neutrons and so on — are composed of extremely small gnomes. While relatively unknown, the gnome theor...
Statistical Significance of Doom (part 2)
False positives are somewhat scarier than false negatives. What if my research claims a drug cures cancer, giving thousands of sufferers hope, but it turns out ...
Making Darwin UnComfortable
Evangelical minister Ray Comfort recently put out a “150th Anniversary Edition” of On the Origin of Species, with a Special Introduction attacking D...
What a Weird World
Deep in space, a fire burns. It is not an ordinary fire. It is the heat of uncountable gazillions of tiny pairs of protons and electrons being squished together...
Any Psychologists in the House?
Can anyone explain to me why people love talking about things like they’re experts when they really don’t know anything about the subject? Like this...
Why People Believe Weird Things, Redux
Michael Shermer wrote a book called Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, which I own and have read se...
Review: The Mind of the Market
I recently bought Michael Shermer’s latest book, The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economi...
Understanding
I spend quite a bit of my time helping high school students understand physics and mathematics concepts, so I’ve also spent some time wondering how I can ...
Science Limericks
Limericks are fun. Science limericks more so. A woman in liquor production Owns a still of exquisite construction. The alcohol boils Through magnetic coils. She...