Eclipse Progress

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eclipse_progress_15_04_2014_cvjDid you catch the eclipse last Monday? It was wonderful. Here’s a little snap I took of the progress (taken with an iPad camera precariously through the lens of a telescope, pointing out of a bedroom window, so not the best arrangement). One of the striking things about looking at the progress of it is just how extra three-dimensional the moon seems as the earth’s shadow slowly covers it. It really makes one’s whole mind and body latch on to the three dimensional reality of the sky – you really feel it, as opposed to just knowing it in your head. That’s sort of hard to explain – and you’re not going to see it in any photo anyone can show – so I imagine you are not really sure what I’m getting at if Click to continue reading this post →

Self-Similar Dinner

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romanesco_fractal_20_04_2014_2
Eventually, although a bit over-priced in the Hollywood farmer’s market, I do fall for these at least once in the season. As someone whose job and pastimes involve seeing patterns everywhere, how can I not love the romanesco? It’s a fractal! There are structures that repeat themselves on different scales again and again, which is the root of the term “self-similar”. Fractals are wonderful structures in mathematics (that have self-similarity) that I urge you to find out more about if you don’t already know (just google and follow your nose). And Click to continue reading this post →

Total Lunar Eclipse!

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There is a total eclipse of the moon tonight! It is also at not too inconvenient a time (relatively speaking) if you’re on the West Coast. The eclipse begins at 10:58pm (Pacific) and gets to totality by 12:46am. This is good timing for me since I’d been meaning to set up the telescope and look at the moon recently anyway, and a full moon can be rather bright. Now there’ll be a natural filter in the way, indirectly – the earth!

There’s a special event up at the Griffith Observatory if you are interested in making a party out of it. It starts at 7:00pm and you can see more about the Click to continue reading this post →

Participatory Art!

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As you know I am a big fan of sketching, and tire easily of the remark people make that they “can’t draw” – an almost meaningless thing society trains most people to think and say, with the result that they miss out on a most wonderful part of life. Sketching is a wonderful way of slowing down and really looking at the world around you and recording your impressions. If you can write you certainly can draw. It is a learned skill, and the most important part of it is learning to look*. But anyway, I was pleased to see this nice way of getting people of all ages involved in sketching for fun at the book festival! So I reached in and grabbed a photo for you.

artists_row_latfob_12th_april_2014

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Young Author Meeting!

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20140413-110946.jpgIt is nice to see the variety of authors at a book fair event like this one, and it’s great to see people’s enthusiasm about meeting people who’ve written works they’ve spent a lot of time with. The long lines for signings are remarkable! As you might guess, I’m very much a supporter of the unsung authors doing good work in their own small way, not anywhere near the spotlight. An interesting booth caught my notice as I was wandering… The word “science” caught my eye. Seems that a mother and daughter team wrote a science book to engage children to become involved in science… Hurrah! So Jalen Langie (the daughter, amusingly wearing a lab coat) gets to be Click to continue reading this post →

Harmonics Can Make Metals Flux

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I’m sitting on the bus, on my way to the LA Times Festival of Books. I’ve opened my notebook to maybe sketch a face or two, but then I spot an algebraic error on a page from a few days ago, so I set about correcting it….(you know, either for those historians who will argue about my intentions while poring over these once-lost manuscripts…. Or more likely for me in a few weeks, likely to get confused by my own blunder-in-haste with a kindergarten level variation.)

20140412-122335.jpgA bearded fellow had boarded the bus and sat next to me while I was doing this. He eventually glances my way, then away, then he does a double take. I’ve been watching him out of the corner of my eye. He starts to speak to me.

Calc or Trig?
Excuse me?
Calc or trig?
Er…. Physics.
What are you studying?
I’m not…studying. It is my research.

Silence from him for a few beats, then:

Into what?
Charged black holes.

I should say at this point that I get this a lot. No matter who I meet out there in the random world, or what they see me writing, the assumption is always that I am taking a class in high school mathematics. Why is that? People, at least guess for some of the time that I might be at least teaching it, even if you can’t imagine people doing research in this area. The grey hairs in my beard are a guide to your assumptions.

Another gripe: if you see someone writing words, and want to engage them in conversation about it, you don’t assume they are practicing the basic structures… Imagine the analogous exchange: Are you practicing joined-up writing madam, or spelling? Neither, I’m writing poetry.

Anyway, back to the conversation. So, as you recall, I said Charged black Click to continue reading this post →

Exam Heat

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We had a midterm in the undergraduate General Relativity class this week. Midterm II. We’d just come off a batch of lectures on black holes (focussing on Schwarzschild and Kerr), and so it seemed very natural to focus on that as the topic. Schwarzschild is the most basic (vanilla) black hole and Kerr is the case of having rotation for a bit of extra flavour. They are both hugely important in real physics – the former for the basic phenomena and then the latter since most objects out there in the astrophysical realm are actually going to be rotating to some degree (and after gravitational collapse, probably a high degree). So I focussed on those in class.

Screen Shot 2014-04-11 at 14.45.37For the midterm therefore, I got the opportunity to have them discover properties of the (less astrophysically important perhaps) charged black hole – the Reissner-Nordstrøm solution*:
[tex] ds^2=-\left(1-\frac{2M}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)dt^2+\left(1-\frac{2M}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)^{-1}dr^2+r^2\left(d\theta^2+\sin^2\theta d\phi^2\right)\ ,[/tex]

…and do a few computations with it analogous to what they did for the other cases in class and in homework. I hope they had fun (like discovering that for a Click to continue reading this post →

Festival of Books and CicLAvia

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public crossword at festival of booksBy the way, for those of you in the area, don’t forget that the LA Times Festival of Books comes to the USC campus again this month. It is next week – the 12th and 13th April. The book prizes ceremony is the night before, as usual. on the 11th, and as usual there is an interesting selection of finalists in various categories that you can see online here, for example.

(Happily, there is no clash with a CicLAvia this year! – You might remember the craziness last year – The next Ciclavia is this coming Sunday, the 6th, and it is along Wilshire again. Sadly, I will not be able to attend since I must be away on a trip and do not return until the afternoon on Sunday, leaving little time to get on my bike and get down there. Do head there and enjoy it… the Wilshire route is particularly nice.)

The main Book Festival website has a lot of information up about what is Click to continue reading this post →

Major Honours

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On Friday I had to give the keynote address at the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony held here on the USC campus. I did not know what that really was when asked, perhaps because my educational environment as a student was in the UK. (Although for all I know there are such things over there too, but perhaps I did not notice.) After a bit of googling I learned that this is an honours society and it is devoted to excellence in the liberal arts. It is the oldest one of its sort, apparently (founded in 1776), and these days although science was there at the start, the practice is to add “and sciences” when you say liberal arts now. Students who maintain a certain standard of grades through their undergraduate degree in a liberal arts and sciences area are invited to 20140401-093450.jpgbecome members and then there is an induction ceremony. Sadly, no secret handshakes and strange behind the closed doors practices… Well, as far as I know. (In fact, as a thank you for giving the address, I get added to the membership as an honorary member, so perhaps a packet will arrive with my instructions about handshakes and so forth, but I doubt it.)

My speech was to be something about the liberal arts and to celebrate that and to impart some wisdom to the students and their assembled parents and so forth. I was happy to oblige and after letting it stew in background in my head for some time, come Friday morning I sat down at the computer and something nice flowed out through my fingers onto the page. People liked it – a lot, I was later told. I’m still a bit surprised (pleasantly) by that. There may be a story about it later, so I’ll post a link to that when/if it appears.

To my delight I recognised several names in the list for the ceremony. There were in fact five physics majors inducted (is that the right word?) all at the Click to continue reading this post →

Talking with Dinosaurs

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20140401-095516.jpgThursday’s event at the Natural History Museum went very well. There was a great turnout, and the audience was very enthusiastic. As you can see from the photos*, there were two fierce-looking large dinosaurs in attendance in the audience, but it did not have any effect on the overall time-keeping, and the lectures ran over the allotted time quite a bit.

But people had fun, and the museum staff were very kind and flexible, so that’s ok. I actually learned a lot from Ed Krupp’s talk about the astronomy and astronomical objects along the Silk Road from the Far East to the Middle East especially. Laura Danly gave a talk that was mostly a detailed history the Internet including at least three internet cat videos as illustration (an emphasis that I found unexpected, I’ll admit, since I was expecting more about contemporary astronomy). It was certainly a modern perspective on the Silk Road, as we promised the audience, and it seemed to go down well. The observation opportunity that Laura arranged outside (with the telescopes that were set up in the new gardens) was also well received. Jupiter and its Click to continue reading this post →

The Calculus of Gender and Sexuality?

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So, I don’t know why, but in addition to the catalogues I get in my work mailbox from publishers of physics books or lab equipment, I’ve started getting a lot about books in the Humanities and related subjects. Is this because those publishers know of my tendency to dabble in other subject? I’ve no idea. In any case, all of those things tend to end up pretty swiftly in the recycling bin nearest the department mailboxes. A suite of lovely new books on teaching Art History is about as valuable to me as a shiny sets of vacuum pumps or electronic controllers. I’ll admit to sometimes looking through and longing for the time I’d need in order to explore such things (vacuum pumps or Art History texts)… but then into the bin they go.

Well, earlier this week a catalogue arrived and one might be forgiven for thinking that they are really trying to get my attention with this one. It is a catalogue of Gender and Sexuality texts from Ashgate, and if the image on the cover is representative (uh, as far as I know it is not!) they’ve really developed some fancy techniques in the field!

Some of the formulae are hilarious! (And I’m trying to understand the, obviously important, inequality right in the middle…)
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