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Chirality and the Positron’s Mustache

Woke up this morning to the happy news that my post “The Fine Structure Constant is Probably Constant” walked away with the Charm Quark (i.e., tied for third place) in this year’s 3QuarksDaily science blogging prizes. Many thanks to Lisa Randall for judging and Abbas Raza and the 3QD crew for hosting. And of course congrats to the other winners:

  1. Top Quark: SciCurious, Serotonin and Sexual Preference: Is It Really That Simple?
  2. Strange Quark: Anne Jefferson, Levees and the Illusion of Flood Control
  3. Charm Quark: Ethan Siegel, Where Is Everybody?

I already have a great nominee for next year’s contest. One of the most confusing things in particle physics is the notion of “chirality.” The related notion of a particle’s “helicity” is relatively easy to explain — is the particle spinning in a left-handed or right-handed sense when compared to its direction of motion? But a massive particle need not have a direction of motion, it can just be sitting there, so the helicity is not defined. Chirality is the same as helicity — left-handed or right-handed — for massless particles moving at the speed of light, but it’s always defined no matter how the particle is moving. It had better be, since the weak interactions couple to particles with left-handed chirality but not ones with right-handed chirality! (And the opposite for antiparticles.)

It all gets a bit heady, and you can’t give a real explanation without going beyond simple pictures and actually talking about the quantum wave function. But Flip Tanedo at Quantum Diaries has given it an heroic effort, which I insist you go read right now. I don’t want to reproduce the whole thing — Flip was more careful and thorough than I ever would have been, anyway — but I will tease you with this one picture.

Isn’t that the cutest pair of elementary particles you’ve ever seen? I smell a Quark in this lepton’s future.

16 Comments

Busted

Loyal reader Mandeep Gill points out that I wrote “prevarication” when I clearly meant “equivocation” in the consciousness post. It’s now corrected. Very annoying, as I do like to use words to mean what they’re supposed to mean. I think I have a pretty good track record with “begging the question.”

While I have your attention, fellow loyal reader Richard O’Connell points us to a poem relevant to that post: Robert Browning’s Caliban upon Setebos. It begins:

‘Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit’s much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:

There’s a lot more.

Also! Flip Tanedo points out that Brian Hill’s transcription of Sidney Coleman’s lectures on quantum field theory have finally been LaTeXed (pdf). Thanks to Bryan Gin-ge Chen and Ting Yuan Sen for undertaking this thankless task. I took that course a couple years after the notes were made, and every student in the class had a photocopy. Yes, Sidney did gripe a bit that nobody laughed at his jokes any more because they had all read them in the notes.

That’s all I got right now. Just trying to lower the bar so our co-bloggers will be encouraged to contribute more frivolous posts.

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Bloggy Facelift

Some minor but nice improvements to the look and feel of the blog today. We have a shiny new banner, so that it’s easy to tell what blog you are actually reading. And if you find to your horror that you’ve been reading Cosmic Variance when you meant to be reading Not Exactly Rocket Science, there’s a helpful widget in the right column that can take you directly to any of the other Discover blogs. Thanks to the crack team at Discover for the upgrades.

I’ve also added a widget that keeps you updated on our Twitter feeds. Right now that means mine and Daniel’s, as well as the Cosmic Variance feed (mostly, but not exclusively, links to each new blog post), and one I set up for From Eternity to Here. But who knows what the exciting future may bring? Actually I worry a bit that the blog has become less likely since I started with Twitter, since one-liner-type links to interesting things generally go there rather than here. Leaving all the more substantial stuff for the blog, which is great, but there’s only so much time for substantial stuff, so the posting frequency has gone down. Or maybe I just worry too much.

In older but no less fascinating news, we have a Facebook fan page. And — it’s down a bit, so you may have missed it — the long-lamented “recent comments” widget has reappeared.

Last summer we passed our fifth year of blogging at Cosmic Variance, and didn’t even really notice. Here’s to many more years!

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Thank You

When we do our more-or-less annual Donors Choose drive, we’re always pleasantly surprised at how many readers are willing to throw in a few bucks to help school kids in poor areas learn science. So now we’re not asking for money — we’re just saying thanks. (Of course there are always good projects looking for donations.) The best part of the process is the thank-you letters that trickle in from the classes that are helped. Here are some pictures from a few of those classes, using their new materials.

Ms. D’s classroom in Ohio bought science fair supplies.

Mrs. P’s class in Texas purchased a binding machine and plastic binding strips for use in repairing paperback books.

Mrs. L’s classroom in Texas purchased thermometers.

Ms. M’s classroom in Nevada bought “Fun Math Centers.”

Thanks to everyone who donated. You never know what kind of impact you may have had.

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Hits of the Year

Have you folks seen Ed Yong’s massive multi-part year-end round up at Not Exactly Rocket Science? Let’s just say he’s currently on Part Nine, with little sign of slowing down.

Here at Cosmic Variance we’re not nearly as prolific as Ed (there are only seven of us, and one of him), but the idea of a year-end wrap-up is a good one. I.e., it seems to create content in the slow intra-holiday period, without actually coming up with anything new. So here are some of my own favorite posts from the last year, with a few guest posts thrown in for good measure.

If I were a braver person, I’d do a corresponding list of my worst blog posts of the year. And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley.

Happy New Year, everyone.

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Grumpy Kvetching of the Day

If I ever give up blogging for good, it will be because of comments like this:

I just don’t get it. What a lame blog topic that should have been left on the cutting room floor. There is no science here. Evidently cited just to provide an opportunity to express a personal belief. Why not blog on the news of the day..the successfully trapping the first “anti-atom” and its potential implications? This is real news, real science and in keeping with your expertise. You could teach me something. Instead you give me this?

Obviously the sensible reaction is to laugh and move on, but few of us achieve that level of Zen detachment in dealing with the world. Many of the comments at CV are great, and I’ve certainly learned a lot from the interactions here, but quite a high percentage are of this form. When you put a lot of work into the blog and care about how it turns out, this kind of stuff wears you down. Why are people like this? I understand that not every post will interest every person; is it really more satisfying to take time to lash out in the comment section (when you have never left a constructive comment yet), rather than just skipping to something else on the vast and endlessly amusing internet?

[/grumpy]

68 Comments

Give, Give, Give

It’s been days since we’ve hit people up for our Donors Choose 2010 Challenge. As you know, this is our favorite cause. It’s also Stephen Colbert’s favorite, as if you needed any extra motivation.

<td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'DonorsChoose.org Fear Drawings
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Our challenge page has had a great response so far — many, many thanks to everyone who has donated. Every donation is rewarded with a direct thank-you from the classroom that you helped. Here are a few of our responses:

“I simply cannot thank you enough for your selfless donation for much-needed supplies to use in my classroom. I know that your generosity will allow students with learning disabilities to engage in hands-on activities that relate to their everyday lives in reading, writing and math.” — Ms. S, Columbus

“I AM SO EXCITED about this project being funded! I have always wanted this Lakeshore kit to assist my instruction in science. I know that the students will be excited when they are able to work in groups and pairs to understand scientific concepts using this set. Words cannot express how thankful I am to each and every one of you for your contribution to our classroom!” — Ms. L, Forsyth, Georgia

“The items that you will provide for my students will help them with counting. Can you imagine the look on their faces when they see all the resources that they will get? I can. Its a look that I constantly get when I introduce a new concept and they are interested in learning more.” — Mrs. B, Los Angeles

We’re kicking serious butt in the Discover Blogs sub-challenge, which is nice, but our collective behinds are in turn being kicked by the pretenders at Seed, especially the squid people. Do you really want to stand for that?

And while we’re stooping to cheap psychology, did you notice this recent study that women give more to charity than men? Guys, are you going to just sit there and make these scurrilous accusations become reality?

More seriously, I love the big donations, but it would be nice to see more at the $5/$10/$20 level. Doesn’t cost too much, and it can mean a lot to kids without basic school supplies. You’ll feel good!

Last but certainly not least, we wanted to give huge thanks to everyone who helped spread the word via blogs or Twitter. Here’s the roll call of honor:

Louise Butt
Swans on Tea
@Paradise_Host
@barneygrubbs
@pandeiacomic
@BadAstronomer
@VeniceRiley
@ronsimon
@cosmicutopia
@buffalodavid
@cbcnasa
@break1ngscience
@leafwarbler
@pjrobar
@alltop_science
@rationalsquad
@leafwarbler
@pie_r_round
@mdsteele47
@reckonso
@katiebisbee

and who could possibly forget

Janiece at Hot Chicks Dig Smart Men.

Thanks! Every little push helps.

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DonorsChoose Challenge 2010

u548696_sm Time once again (slightly late, actually) for our annual DonorsChoose fundraising challenge. It’s a great program. Public school teachers around the U.S. ask for small amounts of money for their classrooms, and the donor — that’s you — gets to pick exactly how much you give, and to what project. It will break your heart to hear about elementary-school kids in high-poverty areas who need a few bucks to buy whiteboards or calculators. But these basic tools can make a huge difference in inspiring someone to get excited about math and science. Check out some of these projects:

Cosmic Variance Challenge 2010

and see if you aren’t moved to throw a few bucks their way.

As before, we are part of a larger Science Bloggers Challenge. A little friendly competition is good for the soul, and for the donating. Now, in the past, the readers here at Cosmic Variance have done incredibly well in donating — over $12,000 last year! Not sure how that happened, honestly. You guys are good. Can we possibly do even better?

Donors Choose Science Blog Challenge

One thing that will help is that your donations are leveraged. The folks at Hewlett Packard have agreed to match any donation up to $50,000. (Not that we would object if you chose to give more, but it’s not strictly necessary.) So every dollar you give is two dollars of impact.

And who know? Maybe there will be gifts for people who are especially generous. We’re not above bribery. Any ideas for what would constitute a good bribe?

Also! If any other bloggers want to put up a post encouraging their readers to donate at our page, we will be very happy to link back to them with assorted compliments. Heck, we’ll even link to tweeters.

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Working My Way Back

Okay, I think it’s time to step down from hiatus and get back into this blogging thing. I missed you guys! And I notice that the science blogosphere has completely blown up and re-organized since I left. Which is a good thing.

I don’t like to navel-gaze too much about the act of blogging, but a gradual evolution in my own style was the primary motivation for my hiatus. In the good old days I stuck mostly to very short posts, pointing to this or that and making simple comments without feeling obligated to provide elaborate justifications for every little thing. But over time, I found myself increasingly seeing every post as a multi-layered 3,000 word essay. (Even if they didn’t end up that way in actuality, that’s how they often were in my head.) Not a sustainable model for someone for whom blogging is a hobby, not a vocation. I promised myself long ago that if blogging ever started to take up too much time (roughly, more than 3 hours/week), something would be broken and I’d have to fix it.

So here I am fixing it. I really do very much enjoy the idea of blogging, both exploring ideas for my own sake and the wider conversation with other bloggers and with commenters. But given unitarity constraints on my time and energy, I need to concentrate on punchier posts, and comments that are not fully supported against every possible counter-argument. If the experience of writing a book nudged me toward longer forms, the success of Twitter demonstrates the value of the quick hit & link. Of course I will mix things up, which is part of the fun — longer posts here and there, the occasional video. There may be LOLcats. But I’ll try to refrain from writing poetry.

And now for dessert: chocolate extravaganza from my favorite restaurant, Alinea in Chicago. Ordinarily there are no tablecloths at Alinea, but for this course they cover the table with a thin sheet of silicone and — well, you’ll see.

Some of you might find this presentation too precious and extravagant to be enjoyable. I understand, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the Oreo Blender Blaster at Denny’s.

26 Comments

Downshifting

I just counted: this is my 1,540th blog post (counting my youthful efforts at Preposterous Universe.) About two posts every three days, for a bit over six years. Time for a break!

So I’m going on hiatus for a while. While my normal mode of operation is to bounce happily between a dozen different activities, there’s a time for consolidation, and I’d like to concentrate on research for a while. It’s been madcap travel ever since the book came out, which is finally done with, and I look forward to getting back into the groove of solving equations and writing papers.

My hiatus plans aren’t very firm: not sure whether it will be a month or a year. It won’t be permanent, that’s for sure. And I doubt it will even be very doctrinaire; if the mood strikes me, I won’t be reluctant to fire up the old laptop and post something on my beloved Cosmic Variance.

In the meantime, the rest of the crew (not to mention you commenters) will keep the fires burning here at the blog. Maybe I’ll even leave a comment or two if one of those jokers says something totally outrageous. Probably most people won’t even notice I’m gone. (Otherwise I wouldn’t have to announce it, would I?)

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