Category Archives: science

Happy Birthday Hubble!

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It is the 22nd Anniversary of the launch of the Hubble space telescope today! As you know, this instrument has produced a wealth of scientific information over the years, as well as lots of wonderful pictures for everyone that broadened and deepened our sense of wonder about this remarkable universe we find ourselves in. The Hubble site is here.

Phil Plait has re-posted his 2010 post “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble”, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Graphic

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This was a fun assignment. I’m giving a talk (“Graphic Adventures in Science Outreach”) on Friday to my colleagues and friends at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and they asked me to send a graphic to them to use for the poster. So I spent a bit of time digging into my database of drawings for The Project and threw something together pretty quickly. I rather like it. (You will maybe recognize that drawing from an earlier post – I added in an earlier stage, and then a drawing of a hand I’d done for something else…) By the way, it is not an event open to the general public and is by invitation only, so just showing up won’t get you in.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Inquiries

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9:30am, my office. Phone rings. I get it on the first ring.

Hello?

Oh. Is that… Professor… Johnson?

Yes.

Oh! I was not expecting to… Well I’m watching this program, and had some questions…

I see.

Well, when you say…

Well, who am I talking to?

Oh, I’m [name].

Hi.

Hi… So, when you say millions of years, even billions of years in these programs… do you mean earth years? or, um, do you mean space years?

Oh, that’s a good question. I mean the regular years. Earth years, if you like.

Oh. So these things are really that old.

Oh, yes. They are.

I have one more question.

Of course, please go ahead.

Michio Kaku says that the universe is full of many things and all you have to do is ask for something and you’ll get it. How do you go about doing that?

Uh… Well… I’m not sure I understand what that means…

Well, you know we come from supernovae…. and… we’re from space… and there are maybe lots of gods out there that we can ask for things…Kaku says we can just ask the universe. How does one do that?

Well… I am not sure what he had in mind. It might be…. might be best to ask him…. But maybe what he meant is that the universe is a very big place, with lots of things going on, and maybe he meant that there are all sorts of things you could find out there because it is so big and diverse… But perhaps he did not have in mind that a particular person could go out and get any of those things… but you might want to ask him. I can’t say for sure.

Oh, ok.

But I can tell you what I think. I think that while the universe is a big and exciting diverse place, it is still the case that a given individual only has limited access to all those things in it. It is a big place, and so you mostly only have access to what you can get to locally. Travelling around it takes a long time…

Oh, I see. Well, thank you.

And… thank you, by the way, for watching the program. I am glad you enjoyed it.

Yes, I love these programs.

I’m glad to hear that. I hope you continue watching and do tell your friends about them too. All the best.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

I enjoyed that chat. I love it when people are inspired to step away from their […] Click to continue reading this post →

Picasso and Einstein

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Tuesday evening was fun. My dear friend Amy French, who was hired to direct a production of Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” had been been rehearsing her cast for a few weeks. She invited two people to come along as guests one evening to talk about Picasso and Einstein – their work discussed in the play (Cubism and Special Relativity), and the impact of their work on the world. Megan Mastroianni from the Art History department (see her in the center of the photo above – you can click it for a larger view) came along to talk about the Picasso aspect, and I talked about Einstein. It was a lot of fun, and verity informative for all concerned.

The cast were all assembled, and Einstein and Picasso were even in costume, as we […] Click to continue reading this post →

Downtown Quantum Mechanics

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Oddly today I had a meeting in a skyscraper in downtown LA that I’d been studying last year because I was doing a drawing of it for The Project. Funny old world. I really enjoyed being in it because from the meeting room one can view the classic public library building, a favorite of mine, from the 41st floor, and also check out the scene in the Standard rooftop bar (been a while since I’ve hung out there).

But the most unexpected thing of all was when I returned to ground level. I was walking on my way to the subway and slowed to enjoy a view of the public library, only to be faced with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in two forms, Schrodinger’s equation, and an atomic spectrum (Rydberg, Bohr, etc) that one can derive from the latter, engraved into the wall! Hurrah!

The thing is, I can’t remember whether I’ve seen this before. I’ve passed there so very […] Click to continue reading this post →

Process

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A process update, since some of you are curious about The Project.

While hiding in the desert on walkabout recently, I finished writing a story I’d been working on (one of a few I worked on), and started thumbnailing parts of it and refining the pagination of it. Thumbnails are just little sketches of how a page might be laid out, maybe focusing on how the eye might move about the page, how the words and pictures might flow, etc. There were some pages I was immediately interested to try out, and so I did larger versions of them in rough here and there (and for some other stories too)…. For one of them, I have a really exciting exchange (about symmetry and beauty) over a notepad, and I sketched over oatmeal one breakfast time a mannequin construction of the layout. (See earlier for introduction to my mannequin friends.)

Well, on Thursday and Friday I finished the rough pencils for the whole page, featuring those two figures, now given flesh and bone. Today I did the main figures for another page, with a variation on that pose of the mannequin drawing from the desert. (Vellum helps here.) I thought I’d share (click for larger view):

They’ll be refined later on, with things like scaling of various bits and pieces fixed […] Click to continue reading this post →

Piece about Science and Film

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My friend the science writer Casey Rentz wrote a nice piece about the Science Film Competition and showcase last week for Scientific American Blogs. She talks a bit about the issue of science in film, the competition, and points to some other science plus film projects too. See here.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Science and Food!

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Yes, two of your favorite things, right?

I thought so. Well, consider signing up to my friend Amy Rowat’s special new course at UCLA on the subject. It will feature many fantastic chefs from some of the finest restaurants around the city and beyond, as well as some excellent food writers. The course will have a wealth of wonderful information (like at the answers to why carrots are sweeter in the Winter), and hands on practice to get involved in. I think the course is only open to UCLA students (who should be sure to register fast to get on the limited list), but there are four public events (I think you might have to register for those too, as space it limited). See the list of events here. I’ve mentioned Amy and her work here on the blog before, soho and have a look at the earlier post for more about her work at UCLA, and go here for more on the Rowat Lab. (See also a recent article featuring her lab’s work on food science in UCLA’s Prime magazine’s Winter 2012 edition.)

Now, even if you do not make it over to UCLA, you can check you the excellent […] Click to continue reading this post →

Documenting

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Speaking of film projects involving science, I’m involved in two new ones I’ve been meaning to tell you about. I’m working on producing a short film about the Aspen Center for Physics, to be used in the upcoming 50th Anniversary celebrations. My partner in crime on this is Bob Melisso, who I’ve worked with before a number of times, and it’s already been interesting, and fun. I think that the final piece ought to be interesting at the very least. I’ve been trying to work in a very particular look and feel for the film that reflects something about the nature of the work that goes on at the center (both its content and how it is done), and so there’ll be lots of chalk, scribbling on boards, reflections on the creative process and how a place like the Aspen Center helps, and so on and so forth.

We’ll be shooting from time to time over the early and middle Spring, and doing the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Losing Control

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Have you heard about Losing Control? It is a film that’s being released this year with a lot of promise to be unusual, interesting, and sure to tackle an area that you don’t see covered much in the mainstream: the choices facing a young female scientist when it comes to her career and her personal life. I was introduced to Valerie Weiss, the writer/director/producer of the film not long ago in the context of a project I was doing concerning science and film. Valerie is an award-winning filmmaker who has a background as a research scientist, and so is in a great position to tackle such subject matter. I’m looking forward to the film a lot. I want to see more of this sort of thing, as you know from my writing here about science and scientists in the media. This is (I think) Valerie’s first feature film, so let’s hope it does well so that she can be encouraged to do more work on this sort of subject matter.

It’s going to start with limited releases in cities in the US such as New York, Sacramento, Tacoma, Boston, Los Angeles, and Tempe, and go on from there, so try […] Click to continue reading this post →