nanoscale views

Here is a neat little video of Prof. Jim Kakalios , who acted as a science advisor on the forthcoming Watchmen movie . Watchmen is a grap...

I know that it's been a while since I've done one of these. It's not because of a lack of interesting papers on the arxiv ; rat...

I just saw this (link to video), and I was quite impressed. Mr. Jarvis (the animator) has a real pedagogical gift. I wonder if one could ...

In hindsight, I suppose that I should have addressed phonons earlier. A phonon is a quantized sound wave - a collective vibrational mode of...

Once again, nano-hype . This time the subject is this very nice paper from Seeman's group at NYU , in which they use DNA-based tools t...

Continuing my series of posts trying to describe condensed matter topics in relatively non-technical language.... As I've mentioned befo...

Thankfully, my bad feeling was off-base. According to Speaker Pelosi's summary of the conference committee version of the stimulus ( wo...

...but I'm prepared to be surprised. For some reason my gut is telling me that the House/Senate conference is going to eviscerate all t...

I thought that it might be fun to have a discussion about "rules to live by" in experimental physics. Here are a few that I think...

I just don't believe it. The "moderate" senators trying to whittle down the stimulus package to avoid a filibuster in the Sen...

Proposal deadlines are almost done with, and then I'll try to post more. In the meantime, here's a question to tide you over. Supe...

I don't know what's more mortifying: this story , or the possibility that the Senate will strip NSF funding out of the stimulus bil...

This was very funny. For those not in the US, my apologies that the video doesn't work. It's Stephen Colbert talking about scienc...

This is another attempt to explain a condensed matter physics concept in comparatively nontechnical language. Comments are, as always, appr...

Yesterday, as a bunch of us gathered in an office to watch the Inauguration, after President Obama's line about science ("We will r...

For those interested, here is a link to the executive summary of the (Democratic draft of the House version) of the forthcoming economic st...

The word quasiparticle is a term of art that condensed matter physics types throw around quite a bit. What does is it really mean? I'...

Continuing on from my earlier posts about insulators, it's worth thinking about what we mean by a "metallic" state. Colloquia...

I've been thinking more about explaining what we mean by "insulators", in light of some of the insightful comments. As I...

It's a small world. Just last week I finished reading this book , a very nice biography of Michael Faraday, possibly the greatest exper...