For Fun

A friend pointed this out to me, but it's pretty funny.  

I've heard people say "the NSCL," and I've heard people say just "NSCL"; likewise with "GSI" and "the GSI." So which one is it? Here we present the results of a literature Wikipedia search on the topic of "The Definite Article and Fragmentation Facilities" (see below).
 

I've been a TA for several different labs at three different schools, and grading is usually the most disheartening part. The lab I was a TA for during the first half of the summer semester (one of those compressed courses) had a "practical lab" in the middle and at the end of the semester--in which students did a lab they'd done before, only this time independently in a foreshortened format--and I just finished grading a passel of them. (I think that's the official word for a group of such things--a herd of cows, a flock of geese, an unkindness of ravens, and a passel of practicals.)

After making websites for two physics departments, I finally made a homepage for myself.  It's mostly professional, but still very much 'me'.  In other news, my science diaries will be on NPR in August, so stay tuned.

Wouldn't it be awful if Senator Amidala had named her children by blending their parents' names? This would be especially horrible if she had used "Ani" instead of "Anakin." Neither "Anime Skywalker" nor "Princess Anime" has the right dignity, methinks.

Check out these pictures of the Earth, as seen by a gamma-ray telescope in orbit. Who says background runs can't be cool? These gamma rays are being produced by cosmic rays whacking into the atmosphere and knocking it to bits (then exciting the bits).
 
By way of comparison, the reactions we study at the NSCL produce gamma rays with energies of a few MeV--the gamma rays mapped in the blue picture are a thousand times more energetic than the ones our detectors here can see.
 

At the last APS meeting, there was a lunch discussion about popularizing science, specifically physics. I have many theories for why physics isn't popular with the masses, and a few ideas for how this could be helped, but the media is definitely an outlet to consider. The last two years, I've watched a TV show called Big Bang Theory, and I wonder whether this show is helping or hurting the view of physics. First, I wonder how many non-physicists or rather non-geek types actually watch the show. If people not interested in science aren't watching the show, it's a moot point.

I had a phenomenal high school chemistry teacher. I took honors chemistry as a sophomore, so it was really hard, but it was also really worth it. There were several reasons the class was memorably great, among them the extra credit opportunities available to students who wanted to present a chapter from the book (I always liked to play teacher), the teacher's amusing habit of practicing putting during our tests (he had a putting green in the front of the room), and the giant, wooden periodic table hanging on the wall in the front of the classroom. Gosh, I liked that class.
 

My April Fool's post was inspired by a Women in Chemistry workshop I went to at the end of March. I almost didn't attend because I would like to see a professional development workshop for all graduate students, not just women. But as I sat there, I realized the need for such workshops specifically for women.

There's certainly not a lack of theories about the end of the world. You can find completely unbelievable ones, or some that start with a scientific fact but blow it out of proportion. For example, just last week I had to reassure my mom that she had been the victim of one of the wacky ones in a TV show mysteriously named “Infinito abre tu mente” (infinite-open-your-mind). A pseudo scientist was claiming he’d discovered the five stages of the universe, and that it’d end in a reverse Big-bang 100 millions years from now, when we’d all end up as deconfined protons.