Funny stuff

Weird Experiments and Mad Science

January 2, 2012

I found out recently about a very entertaining blog (and accompanying book, see below), Weird Experiments.  He doesn’t post very often, but what he posts is fascinating and well-researched.  The book — THE MAD SCIENCE BOOK: EXPERIMENTS FROM THE WILDER SIDE OF SCIENCE — is an entertaining look at a laundry list of interesting experiments [...]

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Dance, dance your PhD

November 20, 2011

I love the Dance your PhD contest, in which doctoral students are invited to take the horrible monster that gobbled their life for 5+ years and interpret it through dance in a 5-minute video.  What better way to become a clear communicator? I was even more excited to see that one of my colleagues, and [...]

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The post you’ve been waiting for — physics jokes that might be phunny

October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!  Some fun joke posts for the holiday. My favorite one for a while, from Paul Doherty: An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one tells the bartender he wants a beer. The second one says he wants half a beer. The third one says he wants a fourth of [...]

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Symphony of Science

October 26, 2011

So, here’s another cool thing that I heard about while at CIRTL — the Symphony of Science site.  I actually got chills watching one of these videos, which uses autotuning to turn some of the most compelling spokespeople for science into science songspeople.  Hard to describe, just take a gander at this video: (Yes, this [...]

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Cat bowling: YouTube physics for the classroom!

May 26, 2011

I was just shown this wonderful little video, thanks to local high school teacher Michael Fuchs.  What does a cat and a laser pointer have to do with inertia and friction?  Check it out.  What a great way to start a class on inertia…  

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Mind Hacks: Familiar faces in unfamiliar places

May 9, 2011

As part of this mini series of cool tricks about the brain (from Mind Hacks), I wanted to write about one neat little trick that I use in a lot of my talks.  It wakes people up.  And the kind of delight that occurs from this simple little Hack makes an audience warm up to [...]

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How to tell the difference between a man and a woman (repost)

February 12, 2011

I’m sorry I’ve been so silent lately!  On top of my usual state of overwork, I’ve been spending all the time allotted to blogging to a substantial site redesign.  Stay tuned for the unveiling of the “new, improved sciencegeekgirl”.  In the meantime, enjoy one of my oldies — but goodies — from the archives. In [...]

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Which is scarier: The zombie apocalypse or math? (Book review of The Calculus Diaries)

January 6, 2011

To continue the theme of the last post, today I’ll write about zombies.  I was happy to get a review copy of Jennifer Ouellette’s new book, The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.  Jennifer is a wonderful writer (and the reason I started blogging; [...]

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The Venn Diagram of Awesome: What Dracula, zombies and Frankenstein have in common with Jesus

January 4, 2011

At a recent Ignite presentation in Boulder, a speaker showed this as one of his slides.  He continued to talk for about 5 seconds, which was as long as it took us to read a few of the overlaps and start to get it.  I had no idea what he said after that, since I [...]

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US Postal Charges Drive Global Warming

December 2, 2010

We knew that the rise in postal charges was horrible and inhumane, but now we can see that it’s also killing the planet!  A wonderfully funny blog post accompanies this over at JoNova. Similarly, global warming has apparently been causing the population of pirates to decrease: So, this means… the US postal service is killing [...]

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Trophy Wives Don’t Need Advanced Physics: Dubious Words of Wisdom from Physics Students

November 4, 2010

When I saw this book title, I knew I had to get a copy (and the kind folks at Pi Press were more than happy to oblige me with a review copy).  Trophy Wives Don’t Need Advanced Physics is clearly a labor of love from Mr. Korsunsky, who clearly spent many years jotting down the [...]

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This is a news website article about a scientific paper

October 22, 2010

Want to get meta?  In the spirit of Moser’s This is the Title of This Story, Which is Found Several Times In the Story Itself (if you don’t know that one, go read it NOW) — Martin Robbins (The Guardian) has truly outdone himself by poking fun at what passes for science news reporting on [...]

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Are standardized tests biased against students who don’t give a shit?

August 30, 2010

Pardon the curse-word, but I just had to share this wonderful little piece from the Onion. And since I would otherwise get taken to task for “taking myself too seriously” I won’t even make any sort of meta-comments on student motivation or other things that we education-types worry about. What’s the point?  It’s just funny.  [...]

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This is a redundant clock

July 7, 2010

Thanks to Don Baird of the Blog of Phyz for this little treasure… And from the website hosting the picture: This is a redundant clock. And this is a redundant description. Hee hee.

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Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

April 11, 2010

“Spook” is another one of science writer Mary Roach’s forays into the science of some weird topic (and not even her most recent, I’m just behind in my reading). Wonderfully researched, and with Ms. Roach’s typical biting humor and marvelous turns of phrase, it’s such a joy to read.  I still liked Stiff better (where [...]

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The Exploratorium discovers anti-gravity

February 15, 2010

The Exploratorium museum houses many wonderful science and perception exhibits, one of which is the anti-gravity mirror — a simple perception exhibit consisting of a big mirror with a platform hidden on the back side.  The explainers (the high school kids employed by the Exploratorium to do a lot of the demos and help visitors [...]

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Animal rights and microwave hot spots

October 31, 2009

I blogged a while back about mapping out the hot spots in your microwave with fax paper, or marshmallows or chocolate chips.  (Your food is not heated at the “nodes”, or cool spots, which is why we have those rotating plates). Here is a decidedly un-yummy (but undeniably creative) take on that activity (as sent [...]

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If a boy pees on the floor and there’s nobody there to see it

September 26, 2009

We see the darndest questions on teacher listservs. It seems that, at one school, there was a mystery to be solved. The boys’ urinals were often surrounded by a puddle of “liquid.” Were the urinals weeping water? Or were the boys purposely urinating on the floor (as the janitor believed)? And, most importantly, how can [...]

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Cow eye tacos

April 28, 2009

In these tough economic times, waste not, want not, right? So, an enterprising Explainer at the Exploratorium thought well, there must be some good use for all these cow eyes we dissect on the museum floor every day. So, yup, you guessed it.  Kudos to those crazy kids for the following recipe: Tacos de Ojo [...]

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Pi day is just around the corner… are you ready?

March 11, 2009

Gosh, I’m posting a pi day post just FOUR DAYS before pi day.  Heavens.  Well, any teachers reading this aren’t going to be preparing until the night before, right?  Besides, pi day is, sadly, on a Saturday this year, so you can always cheat and do it on Monday if you need to! So, yes, [...]

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