More from Sean Carroll
In past years I’ve done several courses for The Great Courses/Wondrium (formerly The Teaching Company): Dark Matter and Dark Energy, Mysteries of Modern Physics:Time, and The Higgs Boson and Beyond. Now I’m happy to announce a new one, The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics. This is a series of 24 half-hour lectures, given by … New Course: The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics Read More » Related Posts: New Course: The Higgs Boson and Beyond Mysteries of Time: New Teaching Company Course Prof in a Box
This year we give thanks for a feature of nature that is frequently misunderstood: quanta. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge symmetry, Landauer’s Principle, the Fourier Transform, Riemannian Geometry, the speed of light, the Jarzynski equality, the moons of Jupiter, space, black hole entropy, electromagnetism, and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.) Of course quantum mechanics … Thanksgiving Read More » Related Posts: Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving
Just a few years ago, Australian Catholic University (ACU) established a new Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. They recruited a number of researchers and made something of a splash, leading to a noticeable leap in ACU’s rankings in philosophy — all the way to second among Catholic universities in the English-speaking world, behind only Notre Dame. … Proposed Closure of the Dianoia Institute at Australian Catholic University Read More » Related Posts: Full disclosure Summer Institute in Philosophy of Cosmology, Santa Cruz The Cosmologist vs. The Cardinal
This year we give thanks for Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge symmetry, Landauer’s Principle, the Fourier Transform, Riemannian Geometry, the speed of light, the Jarzynski equality, the moons of Jupiter, space, black hole … Thanksgiving Read More » Related Posts: Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving
More in science
Close to 900 million people across the Global South live in densely packed urban slums, which often sit in floodplains. A new study finds that one in three slum dwellers is at risk of "disastrous" flooding, a risk that is set to grow as warming spurs more intense rainfall around the world. Read more on E360 →
In theory, quantum physics can bypass the hard mathematical problems at the root of modern encryption. A new proof shows how. The post Quantum Scientists Have Built a New Math of Cryptography first appeared on Quanta Magazine
For centuries, the Native people of North America used controlled burns to manage the continent's forests. In an e360 interview, ecologist Loris Daniels talks about the long history of Indigenous burning and why the practice must be restored to protect against catastrophic fires. Read more on E360 →
The beginning of a RET poster session Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs are an example of the kind of programs that the National Science Foundation funds which are focused on K12 (and broader) education. This summer I hosted a high school physics teacher in my lab for 6 weeks, where he worked on a brief project, with one of my doctoral students helping out in a mentoring role. Just yesterday was the big poster session for all of the participants in the program, and it was very enjoyable to talk with a whole cadre of high school science teachers from across the greater Houston area about their projects and their experiences. Readers may be more familiar with the sibling Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs, which give undergraduate students the chance to work for 10 weeks or so in a lab that is very likely not at their home institution. REUs are a great way for students interested in research to get broad exposure to new topics, meet people and acquire new skills, and for some, figure out whether they like research (and maybe which topics are exciting to them). The educational goal of REUs is clear: providing direct research experience to interested undergrads, ideally while advancing a research project and for some small fraction of students resulting in an eventual publication. RET programs are different: They are intended as professional development. The teachers are exposed to new topics, hopefully a fun research environment, and they are encouraged to think carefully about how they can take the concepts they learn and translate those for the classroom. I am very much not an expert in education research, but there is evidence (see here, for example) that teachers who participate in these programs get a great deal of satisfaction and have lower attrition from teaching professions. (Note that it's hard to do statistics well on questions like that, since the population of teachers that seek out opportunities like this may be a special subset of the total population of teachers.) An idea that makes sense to me: Enhancing the motivation and job satisfaction of a teacher can have a larger cumulative impact on educating students than an individual research project for a single student. It would be a great shame if RET and REU programs are victims of large-scale cuts at NSF. The NSF is the only science agency with education as part of its mission (at least historically). All the more reason to try to persuade appropriators to not follow the draconian presidential budget request for the agency.