This is really cool. Well, technically it’s hot.
I especially like how the drops move uphill in seeming defiance of gravity, since you can’t see the invisible transition to vapor that’s doing the work.
Monthly Archives: September 2013
Ah, Cappella
The vocals from the Medley part of Abbey Road. Good stuff.
That's a Lot of (Red) Bull
Winners of the Red Bull Illume Photo Contest 2013
Some really neat shots in there.
STEMming the Myth
A pretty good summary of the situation, I think, including the point that making more students scientifically literate is not the same as churning out more science majors.
Also, this:
Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle. One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit. It gives employers a larger pool from which they can pick the “best and the brightest,” and it helps keep wages in check.
I Believe This is a Good Point
Why I don’t believe in science…and students shouldn’t either
There are plenty of other scientists out there that don’t like the use of the word “believe.” Kevin Padian, of the University of California, Berkeley, wrote an open-access article about science and evolution, entitled “Correcting some common misrepresentations of evolution in textbooks and the media.” He states:
“Saying that scientists ‘believe’ their results suggests, falsely, that their acceptance is not based on evidence, but is based somehow on faith.”
Back to the Bullet/Block Experiment
Veritasium has their response to the bullet/block I experiment I linked to and explained, and then explained some more. I absolutely love that they were overwhelmed with responses as people tried to figure it out.
One nit: momentum is not always, always, always, always conserved. It’s conserved when you define the system such that there is no net external force on it. The bullet-block system can be said to conserve momentum during the collision, because it happens quickly and the perturbing impulse is small. But over a longer time, the momentum clearly changes, as the block rises and then falls. One would have to incorporate the earth to have momentum be conserved, but that wouldn’t help solve the original problem. Defining the system so that one can come to a solution is a large step in the setup to any problem.