tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92026389587235114262011-08-01T16:43:31.027-04:00Physics-related ruminations of Joshua Roth, amateur astronomer, physics teacher, and science journalist.Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-79020626396605107532009-10-10T20:11:00.002-04:002009-10-10T20:31:37.514-04:00

The autumnal equinox has passed, and night now is longer than day. And we who labor in the schools of the northern U.S. arise in darkness, dress in darkness, break our fast in darkness, and eventually drive to work in darkness - all because our federal government insisted, a few years back, upon extending Daylight Savings Time (DST) from its customary autumnal endpoint (early October) by more

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-22068061655841969052009-08-30T10:05:00.006-04:002009-08-31T21:26:58.156-04:00

I don't know what depresses me more: the fact that American taxpayers have spent five million dollars on a treadmill for astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), or the fact that NASA allowed the treadmill to be named after comedian Stephen Colbert.Disclosure: I am not in journalist mode. I haven't called up a single one of my contacts at the American space agency to find out if

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-8068529161496661552009-08-16T11:42:00.007-04:002009-08-16T12:36:28.921-04:00

"Disaster." The term invokes hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, exploding gas lines, chemical spills. And yet it literally means "bad star" - a star that augers misfortune.Now, astrologers make plenty of money telling folks how the stars influence their fortunes. There is not much in the way of scientific accuracy to this field: a 1985 study found astrologers unable to correctly match

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-68353478375374413722009-07-19T15:37:00.003-04:002009-07-19T15:57:16.696-04:00

Tomorrow much will be written and said about the Apollo 11 mission, which brought humans to the surface of the Moon for the first time. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climbed down a short ladder and set foot on the dusty surface of our natural satellite - "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," in Armstrong's famous words. For many, this feat showcased

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-51451443669021478402009-07-08T09:30:00.008-04:002009-07-08T23:25:00.354-04:00

What will they think of next?That's what I find myself pondering after plowing through a typical issue of my favorite science magazines. "They," of course, refers to those scientists who are discovering amazing things about our universe each and every day. For those of us cynics who might have thought that everything worth knowing already has been discovered, this is a refreshing perspective

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-16147231368491073312009-06-26T09:26:00.007-04:002009-07-05T22:52:27.332-04:00

So little time ... so much to cover! Thus runs the physics teacher's lament. I see my students for three or at most four hours weekly; they spend, at best, as much time again on homework - and together we are expected to make meaningful contact with the whole of classical physics: kinematics; Newton's Laws; gravitation; static electricity; circuits; magnetism; light, waves, sound, and optics ...

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-48697124674001860942009-06-25T23:22:00.004-04:002009-07-05T14:22:17.631-04:00

... two for the show! Actually, this is nonsense: I get no money (thus far) from writing my blogs, and in the past four weeks I have given very little show (i.e., I've posted nothing new for my ever-so-patient, possibly few-in-number readers). So how do I get away with announcing that I'm starting yet another blog, when I so irregularly post to this one?Answer: because I can.My new blog, book vs.

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-54952999362301866402009-05-28T22:01:00.002-04:002009-05-28T22:04:48.169-04:00

I'm a teacher, a parent, and a kid at heart; so I'm naturally drawn to books, toys, and science kits that bring physics and related topics to life. Today's grab bag, tested by yours truly, and/or his sons:The SmartLab Toys series of science kits. We got the Voice Changer kit and had fun wiring it together. Speech, alas, is largely unintelligible through this distorting amplifier; but the device

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-42108247757050793592009-05-12T22:19:00.004-04:002009-05-13T10:29:26.890-04:00

As I write this overdue post, the crew of STS-125 wrestles with two pieces of outdated technology: the Hubble Space Telescope and the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Outdated, yet history-making: the telescope for making it possible to see unprecedented detail in planets, nebulas, and galaxies beyond our own; the shuttle for making it possible to think about space travel the way people once must have

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-16080188469835418862009-04-27T21:01:00.011-04:002009-06-14T14:18:10.163-04:00

Well, maybe you have - but I hadn't, not until an idle online search for articles on pinhole cameras led me to an excellent essay by British physicist-cum-YouTube star Jim Al-Khalili.Why search on "pinhole camera" (besides an impulse to see the surprisingly detailed photos that artists have taken with little more than a cardboard box)? Because we're using these simple devices in Room A302 to make

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-85454732177589025502009-04-21T10:56:00.005-04:002009-05-03T18:38:43.962-04:00

My Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook came programmed to boot up its browser with Yahoo! on display. That's OK with me, since I get most of my e-mail there; but I do have to resist the temptation to click on Yahoo's often-absurd news leads (see which actress had a lousy, ill-fitting dress at the Oscars!). Today, though, I was intrigued to see a news item on Stephen Hawking.The news itself is moderately

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-4740763338913805582009-04-15T11:56:00.005-04:002009-05-03T18:39:11.189-04:00

If you pay taxes to the United States of America, today's date (April 15th) probably triggers a flood of feelings. With many under economic duress, the tax bill is an unwelcome added demand on scarce (or nonexistent) resources. On the other hand, taxes fund government largesse such as the banking-sector bailouts and stimulus spending (I'm leaving aside for the moment the question of whether the

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-23910032548558044752009-04-04T21:33:00.009-04:002009-05-03T18:39:34.057-04:00

As I like to tell my students, I may have a Ph.D. from Caltech; I may have taken more than a dozen college-level physics courses; I may have aced AP Physics at Uni High 30 years back; and I may have designed radiation detectors and imaging devices for cutting-edge astronomy research projects. No matter. The physics I teach in Room A302, I learned in the past two years - and I am still learning it

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-31512100061355737602009-03-30T21:23:00.003-04:002009-05-03T18:40:02.331-04:00

It was bound to happen – the time has come when I couldn't keep up with my blog. Nothing is more annoying than being, in essence, promised that you'll find something new and thought-provoking on a site, only to find, day after day, that the author hasn't gotten around to posting anything new. To keep it fresh was the implicit promise that I made to a few dozen friends and colleagues, when tooting

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-27558095344142172702009-03-20T20:57:00.017-04:002009-06-14T14:20:48.687-04:00

Plenty of lovely surprises have arrived at my home between the covers of National Geographic; but perhaps the least expected was finding that John Updike – the whimsical author of numerous quirky novels – was moved to wax lyrically about the discoveries that astronomers and planetary scientists are making with space probes and the Hubble Space Telescope.Last December's issue carried an Updike

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-63761301390672518152009-03-15T11:50:00.007-04:002009-03-15T16:52:28.824-04:00

When I first took physics, as a high-school senior toward the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency, I was part of a select minority. As near as I can make it, in any given year only a few percent of the students in my Los Angeles high school studied the subject. My school had but one physics teacher, even though roughly 3,000 students set foot in the place on any given day - an enrollment far greater

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-47998485237931387502009-03-10T16:28:00.003-04:002009-03-10T16:38:20.933-04:00

That's the amount of coal that the U. S. burns every year to light up the bottoms of clouds. Call it 23 million barrels of oil if you prefer. Either way, it's a gargantuan waste of fossil fuels - resources that history may one day judge us harshly for consuming with abandon.Some energy consumption, of course, is hard to avoid - are you going to tell your boss that you were an hour late for work

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-21293523037497951292009-03-07T19:55:00.010-05:002009-03-08T12:11:14.809-04:00

No, this isn’t a column about the magnets you buy for your shoes, knee braces, or whatnot – the magnets that supposedly can cure all manner of ills. Rather, it’s a paean to one of the 19th century’s most miraculous discoveries, a discovery without which modern life would be indescribably different.Many of us, at some point or other, have wrapped a piece of coated wire around a nail and hooked the

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-26755450270189169762009-03-03T22:29:00.007-05:002009-03-08T10:52:25.388-04:00

We've all seen a spoon apparently 'bent' by a glass of water; and many of us have been taught that refraction – the bending of light by water – is responsible. Care to explore this further? Gather a penny; a glass jar, a beaker, or a cylindrical drinking glass with vertical sides; and a tray or similarly flat item that can hold water (such as a glass baking dish, a plastic sandwich container, or

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-35973716171640287902009-02-28T20:11:00.009-05:002009-03-01T23:29:44.690-05:00

The name Galileo is on a lot of peoples' lips these days. Turns out he first turned his telescope skyward exactly 400 years ago, and thus begat a revolution in humanity's view of the cosmos, and of its place in that cosmos.As someone who occasionally turns his own telescope skyward, I'll be blogging about Galileo's telescopic discoveries, many of which you can repeat yourself with all but the

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-68789237675427454122009-02-26T17:33:00.003-05:002009-03-01T23:41:58.019-05:00

Astronomy often gets lumped with physics when universities decide how to compartmentalize human knowledge and allocate office space. There's some sense to this: after all, most astronomers are pretty good at physics, and the pros, at least, have to use physics on a daily basis. But in other ways it's misleading. Physicists can touch the objects of their study, rolling them down inclined planes

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202638958723511426.post-40529373748778621422009-02-25T14:56:00.002-05:002009-03-03T10:29:30.794-05:00

Welcome, students, friends, and colleagues! This is a new weblog of Mr. Joshua Roth, a physics teacher at Winchester High School in Winchester, MA. I hope to share with you some of the joy and wonder of seeing the world through the eyes of a physics student or a physics teacher. I also hope to direct you to great print and online resources for those of you who love physics, astronomy, and related

Joshua Roth, Ph. D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13892455331975562428noreply@blogger.com