Pancakes, served with a side of science
There are few pleasures in life that exceed the simple joy of devouring home-cooked pancakes on a Sunday afternoon. I’m not much of a cook, but brunch is by far my favorite meal. So I decided that it’s...
View ArticleMilk, meat and blood: how diet drives natural selection in the Maasai
This post is a little different from the usual fare at this blog, as I am discussing a paper on which I’m a co-author. My collaborators and I just put up a paper in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. We...
View ArticleCan we build a more efficient airplane? Not really, says physics.
Update (13 October): I emailed David MacKay to get his opinion on some of the critical comments responding to this blog post. David is a physicist at Cambridge University, author of the book...
View ArticleWhat is the true measure of a storm?
As Hurricane Katrina surged towards New Orleans, people faced the unthinkable prospect of abandoning their homes and finding shelter. Worst affected were some of the city’s most vulnerable citizens,...
View ArticleWhat does randomness look like?
On 13 June 1944, a week after the allied invasion of Normandy, a loud buzzing sound rattled through the skies of battle-worn London. The source of the sound was a newly developed German instrument of...
View ArticleAre mass shootings really random events? A look at the US numbers.
Update (8 January 2013): After I wrote this article, I heard that Mother Jones put their data of US mass shootings online. Going through this data, I realized that I made a number of errors in...
View ArticleThe physics of that ‘kickalicious’ kick
Last Friday, the New York Times ran a cover page story about Håvard Rugland, a Norwegian man who scored an NFL tryout for the Jets, based on a youtube video called Kickalicious that has picked up...
View ArticleWhat the Dalai Lama can teach us about temperatures below absolute zero
There’s been a lot of buzz lately in the science blogosphere about a recent experiment where physicists created a gas of quantum particles with a negative temperature – negative as in, below absolute...
View ArticleIn which Minute Physics knocks my blog off the internet, and other self...
Wow. I’m really excited that Henry Reich, who’s behind the absolutely brilliant series of animated physics explainers Minute Physics, included me in his video list of “the most consistently awesome and...
View ArticleThe Universal laws behind growth patterns, or what Tetris can teach us about...
The morning after a big snowstorm swept through the US northeast, I sat in my car, ready to brave hazardous road conditions and drive to the local coffee shop. My home in New Jersey was outside of the...
View ArticleSolar planes are cool, but they’re not the future of flight
Have you heard of the Solar Impulse? It’s a Swiss aircraft that’s powered entirely by solar energy. The ambitious goal of this project is to fly around the world using only solar power. On May 1,...
View ArticleHow much pressure did it take to pop the top off Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano?
On June 17, the Popocatépetl volcano in the state of Puebla in Mexico belched out a pretty impressive looking volcanic plume. Fortunately for us, it was caught on webcam, at a town a safe distance...
View ArticleHow not to shoot a monkey: video analysis of a classic physics problem.
I came across a neat video, via Jennifer Ouellette, where a couple of MIT students re-enact a classic physics textbook problem. It’s a problem that I first heard over a decade ago, when I was in high...
View ArticleThe physics of magnets can model how Supreme Court judges vote
I just read an interesting new physics paper that’s posted up on the arxiv. It’s called the Statistical mechanics of the US Supreme Court, and it attempts to understand how Supreme Court judges...
View ArticleThe physics of that gravity-defying chain of metal beads
Here’s a pretty mind blowing video. It was made by Steve Mould, who’s a science presenter and comic. I was totally baffled when I first saw that. It’s so surprising that many sources covering this...
View ArticleWhy are these caterpillars climbing over each other? The surprising science...
Imagine you’re deep in the Amazon rainforest, and you come across this.. thing. It’s a group of caterpillars, moving in a formation known as a rolling swarm. If you’re anything like me, your first...
View ArticleWhy do caterpillars swarm? We built a game to find out
In my last post, I broke down the science of why some caterpillars work together and form these strange, writhing formations known as rolling swarms. In a sentence: the caterpillars use their own...
View ArticleIn a sperm’s journey, physics meets biology and art
I’ve been working on something really exciting, and it’s finally ready to show you. It’s a video brought out in collaboration with TED-Ed. In it, I explain how the world of a sperm is so fundamentally...
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Welcome to Empirical Zeal’s New Home!
Today, our newest science blog launches! Visit Empirical Zeal for tales about how math and physics are woven into everyday life.
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A New Kind of Food Science: How IBM Is Using Big Data to Invent Creative Recipes
Computers are constantly getting smarter. But can they ever be creative? A team of IBM researchers believes so. They’ve built a program that uses math, chemistry, and vast quantities of data to churn...
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