Friday, November 01, 2019

Sorry for the hiatus

My apologies for the unusually long hiatus in posts.  Proposal deadlines + department chair obligations + multiple papers in process made the end of October very challenging.   Later next week I expect to pick up again.  Suggested topics (in the comments?) are always appreciated.  I realize I've never written an advice-on-grant-proposal-writing post.  On the science side, I'm still mulling over the most accessible way to describe quantum Hall physics, and there are plenty of other "primer" topics that I should really write at some point.

If I hadn't been so busy, I would've written a post during the baseball World Series about how the hair of Fox Sports broadcaster Joe Buck is a study in anisotropic light scattering.  Viewed straight on, it's a perfectly normal color, but when lit and viewed from an angle, it's a weirdly iridescent yellow - I'm thinking that this really might have interesting physics behind it, in the form of some accidental structural color

4 comments:

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

I'd like a post on grant writing please, as I am helping revise an R01 due next month.

Anonymous said...

Grant writing advice would be great, and at some point it would also be interesting to hear your thoughts on the latest magic-angle bilayer graphene developments (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1695-0)

Grumpy said...

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how to best Chair a department, faculty recruiting and retention, boosting dept prestige/visibility/ranking, creating a happy environment for students, etc.

Douglas Natelson said...

PPP, Anon, I’ll see what I can do, though I’m never as successful as I’d like. Grumpy, I’m not sure my thoughts on being chair are particularly insightful - still learning. One thing I do know is that it’s been teaching me patience. Rankings, for example: there is basically no way to move ranking numbers quickly without some truly exceptional circumstance (eg, members winning the Nobel). Maybe when my term is over...