October 2008

[NASW] Artists and opthamology

October 28, 2008

[CASW New Horizons: Michael Marmor, Professor of Opthamology, Stanford] This was a very interesting little talk by an opthamologist and art collector about what happened to two particular artists as they lost their vision — Degas and Monet.  Here is a link to the original article, with pictures. Degas suffered from maculopathy, where his vision [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] This is your brain on marketing

October 27, 2008

[CASW New Horizons; Baba Shiv, Professor of Marketing, The Frinky science of the human mind] Note that all papers on today’s talks are at sciencewriters2008.stanford.edu Baba Shiv is the guy who did the famous study on perception of the quality of wine being intimately connected to how expensive people thought the wine was.  This talk [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Pain is in the brain

October 27, 2008

[CASW New Horizons: Sean Mackey, Pain Management] I was telling another writing as I walked into this session, “I must be in the wrong business.” All the psychology talks are much more interesting than the other ones on stem cells and bioterrorism. This morning is Sean Mackey talking about pain perception. This is fascinating stuff. [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Talking machines

October 26, 2008

[CASW New Horizons: How talking machines can manipulate our brains, Clifford Nass] I usually hate hearing about robots, I find pure technogeek stuff incredibly boring. But talk to me about research on the human brain and behavior and I’m rapt. This was an incredible talk with a constellation of research studies on how speech and [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Obama and corn ethanol

October 26, 2008

[CASW New Horizons Briefing:  Sharon Long, PhD] We were treated to a surprise visit from one of Senator Obama’s science advisors, Sharon Long of Stanford University.  She spoke for a while about bama’s science policies — nothing that hasn’t been written about ad-nauseum on the blogosphere already.  But there was one question, asked by David [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Thinking outside the lab

October 26, 2008

[What's science got to do with it? Thinking outside the Lab. KC Cole, Jennifer Ouellette, Paul Preuss, Adam Frank, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky] Jennifer Ouellette posted a nice post about this session over at Cocktail Party Physics, so I won’t go into a lot of detail about it here, but just add a few thoughts. Part of [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Meet the editors

October 26, 2008

[Pitch Slam:  Meet the editors.  Ivan Oransky (Scientific American), David Corcoran (NY TImes), Adam Rogers (Wired), Bob Sipchin (Sierra)]. Every year at NASW, they have this wonderful event where  we get to meet the editors from major science publications and try pitching a story to them and seeing whether they like them.  It’s really interesting [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Social media and science writing

October 26, 2008

[Science & Social Media:  New Ways to Talk; Craig Stoltz, Susanne Rockwell, Andy Fell] In this session, we heard about how social media (like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, delicious, LinkedIn, etc) are changing the face of journalism.  It was interesting to note the amount of grey hair in the audience.  Many people seemed to be [...]

Read the full article →

[NASW] Blogging from the science writing conference

October 26, 2008

I have been terribly remiss in my blog posts, and I apologize. These last two weeks it was tough to keep up with my day job, and engage in the “global conversation” through fabulous blog posts. BUT, here I am, and “here” happens to be at the National Association of Science Writer’s conference in Palo [...]

Read the full article →

The drama of the immune system

October 24, 2008

Hey guess what!  Science Teaching Tips was just highlighted in the Websights section of The Physics Teacher.   Woo hoo! I’ve got a new episode of  the podcast posted – The drama of the immune system. This is one of the favorites of our group at the Teacher Institute, and teachers are always asking Tory to [...]

Read the full article →

Science of sports

October 20, 2008

One of the NSDL blogs — Exemplary Resources for Middle School Math and Science — just posted a very nice list of several places you can find information on science & sports for use in your classroom: These resources take an in-depth look at how chemistry and technology have had a huge impact on all [...]

Read the full article →

How to see that light is a wave

October 17, 2008

It can be hard to change your view of things. I was just talking about this with a friend last night — we get used to a certain model of the world in science, and it’s rather revolutionary to see the world in a different way. If you see something that doesn’t fit your view [...]

Read the full article →

More research on stereotypes and learning

October 16, 2008

I’m siting right now in a fascinating meeting for my physics education group, and we’re hearing about research on stereotype threat, which I’ve written about before. Stereotype threat is the idea that when you spark cultural stereotypes (like “girls aren’t good at math”) then those people get very stressed about their performance, feeling that however [...]

Read the full article →

PhD Science Dance Contest!

October 13, 2008

How did I not hear of this before?  The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is sponsoring a dance contest! The deadline is November 16.  Your job?  To interpret your PhD thesis in dance form. The contest is open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field, such [...]

Read the full article →

Why read physics blogs?

October 13, 2008

Gentle reader, I could use your input!  I’ve volunteered to write a short piece for The Physics Teacher (a trade magazine for physics teachers), highlighting some good physics-related blogs.  I’ve got my list of favorites, but I’d appreciate any suggestions from others (especially if you’re a teacher) so that I know that I’m not missing [...]

Read the full article →

Put kids’ skepticism to work

October 10, 2008

In the latest episode of my Science Teaching Tips podcast, you can hear (the wildly funny) children’s book author David Schwartz talk about how he used kids’ skepticism to get them to do some good measurement problem.   A class disagreed with the numbers in one of his math books, and set out to prove [...]

Read the full article →

A time for telling

October 10, 2008

“A Time for Telling” is the title of one of my favorite papers of Dan Schwartz (Professor of Education at Stanford). In it, he argues that lecture isn’t all bad. We complain that lecture (or “direct instruction” in ed-speak) doesn’t result in a lot of learning for our students. This has been shown again and [...]

Read the full article →

The temperature in a plasma TV

October 8, 2008

Here is a question posted to a teachers’ listserv: In discussing phases of matter, one of my students inquired about plasmas. We briefly discussed the ionized gasses and I told him that plasma TV’s actually contain such gasses. He knew that the temperatures of plasmas is very high and we both wondered if the actual [...]

Read the full article →

What makes your ears ring?

October 7, 2008

What is it that makes your ears ring after something loud (like a private iPod concert turned up too high)? The highfalutin’ word for it is “tinnitus.” When your ear is exposed to sounds that are too loud, the hair cells in the inner ear that act as little sound sensors get damaged. In response [...]

Read the full article →

My favorite part of physics

October 6, 2008

One of the students in my Adopt a Physicist class just asked me: hi, i wanted to know what is the most interesting part or aspect of physics to you? I had to think about it a moment. Here’s what I wrote: What I like best about physics are two things: 1 – Explaining how [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries