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August 2008 Link Archives
3 Things for Science Education
Adam Savage from Mythbusters on three ways to fix science education in the U.S. These three things might be the simplest way to get the most gains out of science education. For all the politicians you hear promising to spend money on education, we suck at spending money on science.
Annual Variation in Nuclear Decay?
A curious collection of results claiming that the fine structure constant (and therefore nuclear decay rates) vary with the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Seems like it's in it's infancy at the moment but it could definitely have serious implications for many different experiments.
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Mythbusters took on the moon hoax last night in an attempt to prove many of the claims from hoax-enthusiasts wrong. I haven't seen it myself yet but Bad Astronomy has a long history of this episode in the making and a review.
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Building your own Large Hadron Collider? You'd better start here, at the 1600 pages of documentation on each of the detectors and the Machine itself.
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Cosmic Variance has the clearest view I've read about the current status of the LHC, what is planned for September 10th (Beam Day), and the likely order of events after that.
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Sciencegeekgirl wrote about kids who are rewarded for challenging themselves or consistently told that they're smart and the subsequent outlook on intelligence as a static or dynamic feature in life. This "Growth" vs "Fixed" mindset is something I've definitely thought quite a bit about in the past and comes as little surprise that there's research in this area.
What does come as a surprise is her statement that "I know I'm of the 'Fixed' mindset, and it really hampers me in life." I was definitely encouraged as a child by the idea that I was naturally smart and I can tell you a number of occasions where I was set back because I was challenged and felt that I wasn't smart enough. However, I find that knowing I grew up with the "Fixed" mindset is encouraging because I can tell when I go back to that mindset and I can ignore all those signals about not being smart enough. It makes you wonder how you could possibly compare intelligence when the difference is really only how much effort you put towards it.
What does come as a surprise is her statement that "I know I'm of the 'Fixed' mindset, and it really hampers me in life." I was definitely encouraged as a child by the idea that I was naturally smart and I can tell you a number of occasions where I was set back because I was challenged and felt that I wasn't smart enough. However, I find that knowing I grew up with the "Fixed" mindset is encouraging because I can tell when I go back to that mindset and I can ignore all those signals about not being smart enough. It makes you wonder how you could possibly compare intelligence when the difference is really only how much effort you put towards it.
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No More Physics Research at Bell Labs
Bell Labs has all but shut down their fundamental physics research program which was responsible for, among other things, the transistor, laser and fractional quantum hall effect. Two things come to mind: firstly, can you imagine what life would be like if the miniaturization of technology via transistors had been 10 years later? And secondly, I think it goes without saying that these kinds of go-build-something-cool research institutions are incredibly valuable. Where else do these exist today and what can we do to foster more of them?
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The New Cal Academy of Science
KQED's QUEST program has a look at the new California Academy of Science is opening in Golden Gate Park on September 27th and it looks absolutely amazing. You know it'll be great because the people working there are so incredibly enthusiastic about whatever their specialty is and science in general. I moved to San Francisco after they closed the old Cal Academy so I'm totally psyched to get in and see the new one!
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Yes, your score as an Olympic athlete can be imaginary. A fun diversion on the equations used to calculate track and field scores at the events.
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Swans on Tea about the recent paper which summarizes an experiment on the lower bounds for the speed of entanglement. I'm curious about the question of whether the information actually travels faster than light or if it's (as Tom puts it) "an inherent behavior of quantum mechanics" and why these two things are distinct.
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Science Foo Camp was this weekend at the Googleplex. Sabine from Backreaction posted early and often about day one, day two and sessions she attended and it sounded like a well-executed conference.
As a student it would be incredible to attend something of this caliber so I have some reservations about the exclusive format but at the same time I understand that an event with limited attendance means that you can make it a better conference. Count me as conflicted on this one for now.
As a student it would be incredible to attend something of this caliber so I have some reservations about the exclusive format but at the same time I understand that an event with limited attendance means that you can make it a better conference. Count me as conflicted on this one for now.
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Videos from the ongoing Fermilab lecture series since 2000. Organized nicely by technical level.
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A short post from Jennifer Ouellette resting nicely on the point that disaster shouldn't keep us from reaching for the stars. It doesn't sound as if there has been any recent occurrence which inspired this post and it has a more poignant and less manic feel to it than most of her regular posting at Cocktail Party Physics. Not that I dislike her CPP style but it's pleasing to read something with a definitive point from someone so talented at writing.
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As usual, Gordon has a really succinct and well writen description of the recent data released from the Tevatron which excludes the Higgs boson around 170 GeV.
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Sean Carrol with his predictions on LHC findings in the next five years. A lot of the stuff he mentions makes me all tingly inside (esp. preons!) and I would like to +1 his wonderful 50% chance of "Something that Has Never Been Predicted" - nature really has a wonderful way about these things...
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Matt from Built on Facts got bought! Well, not in so many words but he's making the jump to Science Blogs, like many other excellent science blogs have in the past. Congrats to him!
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