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Dancing
Last night was the University of Waterloo's annual holiday dance. Jon Seiger, who does a mean Louis Armstrong impersonation, swung hard all night long–he is so much fun to dance to. Santa made a visit and even busted a few moves. Video evidence is below.
A big thanks to the organizers and all the volunteers.
This video wins my vote for awesome thing of the week.
The animation is based off of this routine by Max Pitruzzella and Annie Trudeau.
This is one of my favourite TED talks. John Bohannon completely blew my mind. In the space of eleven minutes using dancers he talks about laser cooling, super fluids, slow light, and cellular biology. This talk, especially the first half, is a synthesis of all the things I have come to believe about science communication. Incredible choreography and timing.
John also runs the popular Dance your PH.d contest I entered a couple years back. My favourite line from the talk:
I think that bad Powerpoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy.
My only criticism is that during the second half, when he is making his point about Powerpoint and arts funding, the dancers were distracting. The attention should have been solely on John and what he was saying, not the lazy boy the dancers formed. I think it would have been more powerful to have the dancers leave the stage and then rush back in for the finale. The absence of the dancers would have fit nicely with his point about what would happen if arts funding is cut. Still, this is a very minor quibble. I loved this talk and will be watching it over and over again.
(via Madhur Anand)
Ford made this great feature about Aimee and Alex, two Lindy Hoppers, and their trip into Toronto to dance. The final destination in the video is the Dovercourt House, the site of the big Saturday dance. When I was in Toronto the Dovercourt was like a second home to me. So good to see it again.
Who would have known that Bill Nye is a fellow Lindy Hopper!
This past weekend I attended The Ultimate Lindyhop Showdown in New Orleans. Showdown is an awesome event that features excellent dancing, amazing competitions, and mind-blowing music. I spent the entire weekend in the French Quarter listening to the street bands who seem to populate every corner. There is no shortage of good music (and dancing).
Normally I would take copious quantities of video at an event like this, but there were already dozens of people filming the dances and competitions. Instead, I decided to do something different. Some 15,000 photos later I had enough material to create a timelapse of the weekend (Watch it in HD if you can). The music is a recording I made on the Saturday night of Meschiya Lake & Her Lil' Big Horns. Meschiya is a tremendous performer. I can't recommend her album Lucky Devil enough. If you have a spare $11 sitting around, it is definitely a worthwhile investment.
A big thanks to Amy Johnson and her team. I can't wait for next years event.
This past weekend I shot my first time-lapse video of a street festival, called Square 2 Square, that has been running this summer in Waterloo. Every few Sundays the main street through town is designated a car free zone. Local business set up booths and fun activities take place. During the last Square 2 Square festival I took some footage of a street water fight near my house. This time around a good friend of mine, David Trinh of Hep Cat Hoppers fame, set up a Lindy Hop booth. I set my camera on top of his car and set my camera to take a picture every 3 seconds. Nearly three hours and 3000 pictures later this is what happened.
Another reason I love Waterloo: during the three hours I was out on the street I ran into seven other physicists.
This past Friday was my PhD convocation ceremony at the University of Toronto. It was great to have so many of my family members there! We were called up two-by-two during the ceremony, and I heel clicked as I was being presented. Fortunately my mom caught the moment on video.
This is my entry into the last Dance Your PhD contest. I did not win, but had a lot of fun putting this together. Here is the summary of the video: > Using the power of Quantum Physics, it is possible to make a ruler that can measure things far more accurately than normally possible. My PhD involved using photons, the smallest particles of light, in order to make such a "quantum ruler". I was able to get indvidual photons to cooperate with one another, leaving them entangled. These entangled photons have special properties that allow them to be used to accomplish things not ordinarily possible.
Jasper and I are thinking of working on some other dance videos to explain scientific concepts. If you have any physics ideas that you would like explained through dance, let us know in the comments.
