Nathan Explains Science on Santa Fe Radio Cafe

Sadly, my real job has kept me from doing my real avocation, blogging, and it's especially unfortunate this week since the Republican National Convention is in full swing just in time for hurricane season.

But fear not!

The lovely and talented Mary-Charlotte over at Santa Fe Radio Cafe interviewed me recently on matters political, and you can listen here:

http://www.santaferadiocafe.org/podcasts/?p=2961

Jesus? He's On Your Side

A string of attacks on religious institutions including Muslim and Sikh houses of worship got me thinking about the sort of psychology that justifies these things. That led me indirectly to one of the more significant questions of our time: What would Jesus do?

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:

How the Universe got its mass: the Higgs explained (better)

By now, you probably know what the Higgs boson does — it gives everything in the universe mass. What you probably don’t know is why, and you could be forgiven for that given all the terrible explanations out there, including an uncharacteristically confusing and visually displeasing one by the guy that does the Ph.D. comics.

The Perils of Predicting Politics, or Hari Seldon Was Right

When Hari Seldon, the sort-of protagonist of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, developed a method of forecasting he called psychohistory, he never thought it could predict the future perfectly — any number of fundamentally random events might intervene and muck around with what he thought most likely to happen. Seldon had no illusions that he could predict exactly what would happen — instead, he argued he could compute how likely an event was to occur.

On Stupid Names and Poorly-Understood Statistics

Let's get one thing right out of the way: the "God particle" is a stupid, nearly nonsensical name for it. It's called the Higgs boson, and that's all I'm going to say about stupid names.

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.

Newton's First Law — in 200 Words or Less

Reading my recent post about gravity the other day, it occurred to me that it might be fun to go back and do some basic science— in 200 words or less. Part exercise for me, part shot of science espresso for you. Today, Newton's first law.

It’s a humble but profound statement: objects in a state of uniform motion tend to remain in that state unless an external force acts on them. In plain English, Newton’s first law means that if you throw a baseball, it will go in a straight line at constant speed forever unless something pushes or pulls on it.

Of course, wind resistance and gravity are always pushing and pulling, so baseballs never go in straight lines at constant speed. To see the first law in action, find an ice rink or an air hockey table, and toss a puck along it. It’ll go straight at fairly constant speed for a while — longer, anyway, than a baseball would.

Why is the first law important? People once thought objects tended to stay motionless, so you had to push to keep them moving. They missed what’s obvious today: it’s friction that slows things down. Without friction, gravity, and other forces, things like hockey pucks and baseballs would keep moving forever.

Newton’s first law challenges us to think of all the forces involved, like friction and gravity. By doing that, it opens the door to a deeper, farther-reaching understanding of the physical world.

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.