Science, Reporters, Teaching, and More Coffee: Part II

Every year, or most every year at least, I head off to Eastern Washington University to teach and counsel at Satori, a summer camp for kids who like to learn stuff—and learn them we instructors do. But in between learnings, there’s a lot of time for conversation and a lot of time for a lot of coffee. Seeing as I’m a reporter now, I have an excuse to talk to anyone about anything, so I asked Thomas Hammer barista-manager Abby* whether she’d talk with me about science. She cheerfully obliged, though she also had to work. When she was off doing that, Satori director and Spokane school teacher Mike Cantlon filled in, making for an interesting back-and-forth that ranged from—well, this to that and a number of places in between.

Science, Reporters, Teaching, And More Coffee: Part I

Every year, or most every year at least, I head off to Eastern Washington University to teach and counsel at Satori, a summer camp for kids who like to learn stuff—and learn them we instructors do. But in between learnings, there’s a lot of time for conversation and a lot of time for a lot of coffee. Seeing as I’m a reporter now, I have an excuse to talk to anyone about anything, so I asked Thomas Hammer barista-manager Abby* whether she’d talk with me about science. She cheerfully obliged, though she also had to work. When she was off doing that, Satori director and Spokane school teacher Mike Cantlon filled in, making for an interesting back-and-forth of sorts that ranged from—well, this to that and a number of places in between.

How to cloak a Fisher space pen...or a satellite

There's an apocryphal story that, faced with the fact that ballpoint pens don't work in zero gravity, NASA paid a lot of money to develop the Fisher space pen. Meanwhile, the Russians used pencils.

"A Snapshot of the Inside of an Atom" at ScienceNOW

My first story for ScienceNOW in quite a long time, and it's a fun one. Scientists at FOM Institute AMOLF took a picture of the quantum wave function of electrons as they emerged from hydrogen atoms.

Wave function? AMOLF? Google the latter. As for the former, the wave function is the fundamental piece of quantum weirdness, something that physicists have tried to wrap their heads around for eighty or ninety years — and failed. For more, read the story.

Coffee Science with Four Barrel's Alex Powar

We're talking chemistry. Sort of. "Chlorogenic acid, for instance, esterizes into quinic and caffeic acid. Quinic acid...so that produces a lot of bitterness. That's why you never want to reheat coffee. It catalyzes that reaction."

These are a few of my favorite sciences.

What's your favorite thing about the natural world? There are lots of things to choose from. The profound tension between natural selection and biological diversity. The fact that no matter how fast you're going, you'll never catch up with a beam of light. The way snowflakes form.

How to read graphs: The public policy version

I follow The New Teacher Project on ye olde Facebooks, and lately they've been on a rant/rave/something about what they call irreplaceable teachers. This morning, TNTP posted this statement and the following graph:

Walking Through Walls (Sort Of) at ScienceNOW

A long while ago, I taught a summer camp class called "How to Walk Through Walls." It was a physics class that culminated in the idea that matter is really made of waves of probability, and these waves could in principle transport through barriers — that is, you could in theory walk, metaphorically speaking, through a wall.

Well, you can't, but a team in Finland has proposed observing the effect, called quantum tunneling, in a mechanical system. That's something no one's done before, and if they succeed, it will be really, really cool.

Read the story here.

200 Words or Less: Newton's Third Law

Don’t worry too much when that schoolyard bully shoves you — according to Newton’s third law, you’ve already shoved back.

The law — for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction — really means that when one thing pushes on another, the second one pushes back just as hard in exactly the opposite direction.

It's easy to see what the third law is all about. Grab a friend and head to a skating rink. Once on the ice, stand next to your friend and gently push. She’ll go in the direction you pushed her, but you’ll go in the opposite direction. That's because when you pushed your friend, she pushed on you, too.

Now think about this: when you jump up in the air, you push on the ground, just like you pushed your friend. That means two things: it's the earth pushing on you that tosses you in the air, and you're pushing on the earth, making it move, if only a little bit.

Now, if the earth isn't immovable, can it be the center of the universe? The third law says "no," and along with other insights, it began to permanently undermine the idea of an earth-centered universe.

Bonus experiment! It doesn't fit in 200 words or less, but you can also feel Newton's third law. Grab your friend again, get a basketball, and pass it between you. Pay attention to what you feel on your hands — pressure. That's the force of the ball pushing on you when you pass it.

How Gravity Works

Some time ago, I promised an explanation of how gravity works — in particular, how general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, works. Today I'm going to deliver. This one's a little mind bending, so definitely ask questions if you're confused. I like questions. Questions are cool.

Some Questions For You, The Reader

There's this recurring question, "what is political science good for?" Between that and a conversation I had with members of a writer's group, to which I belong, got me interested in how the public views (political) science and how that compares with how (political) scientists view it.