Ian Tucker from The Guardian's Observer interviewed me about Lindy Hop, Quantum Mechanics, and Project Q. Check it out.
Overnight a number of groups submitted videos for Project Q. There are now 156 dancers from 10 cities around the world who have taken part in this project!
Last week I had the chance to sit down with cosmologist Keith Vanderlinde, a CIFAR Junior Fellow at McGill, who spent eleven months straight living at the South Pole in Antartica. During the winter temperatures dip below -70 C and their is continual darkness for nearly six months straight. It gets so cold during the winter that planes cannot fly in–once the last plane takes off you are stranded there until the following sumer.
While in Antartica, Keith was in charge of keeping the South Pole Telescope running. Every day he had to walk 1 km to and from the telescope, often in white blizzard conditions. Keith took his camera with him and captured a series of incredible photos of the night sky and life in Antartica.
While at the South Pole, Keith maintained a fascinating blog about what life is like. My favourite entry is about the 300 club:
There's a tradition here at pole dating back decades, that whenever the temperature outside falls below -100F, the 300 club convenes & initiates new members. You gain entry into the club by first sitting in the sauna with the temperature turned up to 200F, then running outside (a 300F temperature differential, hence the name) and around the pole, all wearing nothing but boots and a smile.
Only once - in the half century for which we have records - has the temperature failed to hit -100F over the course of a winter. It's expected that the 300 club convenes at least once each winter, more likely twice or three times. Well, with the sun now up and temperatures already rising into summer, our low for the year is sitting at -99.9F, and there's no way that would count. Seriously.
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The Rio crew put together this hilarious blooper reel from their Project Q shoot. Extra credit for the awesome Chariots of Fire" homage at the end.
I am looking forward to seeing the final videos!
This past week there has been a flurry of activity with scenes around the world submitting their Project Q videos. So far 90 dancers from six cities have submitted videos! I know there are several more cities shooting their videos this weekend. I'll update the blog (and Project Q page) once the new submissions are online.
Here are some of the videos that have come in so far:
- Niagara Falls, Canada
- Philadelphia, USA (with four submissions): 1, 2,3,4
- Perth, Australia (three submissions): 1, 2, 3
- Boston, USA
- San Francisco, USA
- Norfolk, USA
While I was in Vancouver last week I also filmed the local scene there performing the routine. I haven't had a chance to post it online, but will do so later on this weekend.
A big thanks to everyone who has helped out so far. I really appreciate it.
Shawn Anchor shares some of the secrets to being happy. This talk contains almost everything I have come to believe about happiness.
A superb TED talk filled with humour and truth. Some excellent suggestions at the end for "creating lasting positive change":
- Find three things to be grateful for each day
- Journal the positive things that happen
- Exercise
- Meditate
- Perform random acts of kindness
Good advice.
Next Wednesday I am giving a lecture to a first-year poetry class on the "Physics of Poetry". In this talk I am going to discuss some of the connections between physics & poetry that I have encountered. I need some help though. Specifically, I would like to find out three things:
- Some examples of poems that discuss Science? (ie When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer).
- Has poetry influenced the way you see the world?
- As a scientist, has poetry influenced your work or the way you share your work?
Any suggestions, thoughts, or comments people have would be greatly appreciated!
A clever video by Scientific American about quantum entanglement and Bell's Theorem. This is one of the better attempts that I have seen to explain the concept of hidden variables and the surprising nature of Bell's inequalities.
I have thought long and hard about the best way to explain Bell's inequalities. I would still prefer a less abstract approach, but I really like the way this video introduces the subject and I can't think of anything better off the top of my head. Up to now I have used1 a different card trick to illustrate the surprising correlations that exist between entangled particles and not attempted to explain Bell's work. Perhaps I can convince Marco and Robert to reprise their roles as Einstein and Bohr in a sequel.
Entanglement is such an awesome phenomena that has ramifications in philosophy, physics, cosmology, and biology. Sometimes I take for granted that I get to create entangled states of light in the lab every day.
- Technically it is Dan Trommater, my magician friend, who performed the card trick. ↩
I am the new CTV National Affairs "Science Sensei", and will periodically be appearing on the show to comment on recent science-related stories. This week I discuss solar flares, sun spots, space hurricanes and invisibility cloaks. Check it out.
Fraser Speirs on Apple's recent education announcements:
Apple already revolutionized education when it invented the iPad. While iBooks textbooks are a bridge from the past to the future—and we do need a way to get to the future—they are not that future. If Henry Ford had been an educational publisher, his customers would have asked for electronic textbooks instead of faster horses.
The recent announcement of digital textbooks, iBooks creator, and iTunes U is a move (mostly1) in the right direction. My feeling is that the best is yet to come. In some ways Apple's development of the iPad is like Guttenberg's invention of the printing press. All the benefits of the web, apps, and digital communication converge seamlessly in one device. The next ten years will be interesting.
- Except for the draconian licensing terms associated with iBooks creator. As John Gruber put it: "This is Apple at its worst". ↩
The IQC has made a short behind the scenes video about my TEDxUW talk. The video contains a hint about some of the things I am planning in my upcoming TEDxWaterloo talk.
A colleague of mine, Anne Broadbent, just published a fascinating piece of work in Science. The story has been picked up by the BBC as well! Their were television crews in the building all morning interviewing Anne about her work.
Here is the IQC's press release regarding the experiment.
There is a European bias, but powerful work nonetheless. I found it interesting they chose to include Albert Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize win as the one major scientific achievement. At the very least, the invention of the World Wide Web should have been added. I also found it strange that the great depression was not included.
Someone should make a video of 100 years of Physics1.
- Or a video of 100 years of Biology, Chemistry, Medicine, etc... ↩
This coming March I am going to be explaining some the intricacies of Quantum Mechanics using Lindy Hop. To pull this off, I need your help.
The goal is to get as many scenes as possible to film themselves performing the routine. The footage will then be spliced together and be incorporated into a larger performance.
My TEDxUW talk is online now. Thanks once again to the organizers for putting on such a great conference. It was a pleasure and honour to participate.
In March I have been invited to speak at TEDxWaterloo as well.
A documentary by Karol Jalochowski that profiles a number of physicists working at the Centre for Quantum Technologies1 in Singapore. It is great to hear fellow physicists talk about why they love science and the things that attract them to quantum mechanics.
From the Vimeo description:
THE MECHANICS is a short documentary project about the crazy world of quantum mechanics. The mechanics - all based in the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore - are: Stephanie Wehner, Dagomir Kaszlikowski, Elisabeth Rieper, Kwek Leong Chuan, Pawel Kurzynski, Artur Ekert, and Momo Lu Yin.
- The CQT in Singaporean equivalent of the Institute for Quantum Computing where I work. ↩
I have spent the last week trying to see if Tumblr could replace my Wordpress blog. This experiment has taught me some interesting things:
- The community on Tumblr is amazing.
- Tumblr is primarily geared towards sharing shorter thoughts and ideas. Want to throw a picture online. Easy. Share a video. No problem. Compose a more complex post with multiple images and videos. Much harder. Wordpress beats Tumblr hands down for longer posts.
- I love the Tumblr dashboard. So much great material scrolls by (assuming you are following the right people).
- Many Tumblr sites simply reblog others posts with out adding much original content. This is OK. Tumblr is designed to reblog and share material. Some Tumblblogs remind me of Myspace–endless pages of flashing gifs of talking heads.
- Despite optimizing some things, Tumblr sucks at SEO compared to Wordpress (unless you put in a lot of work).
Point #2 is what is giving me problems. It is too hard to create more complex posts compared to the Wordpress workflow I have established. There are also many things that I want to reblog but I don't want them cluttering up my site causing my original content to get lost.
So I have decided to move my "proper" blog back to Wordpress. This is where I will post my thoughts, write articles, and share links to things I find compelling. But I will still cross-post my articles from Wordpress to my Tumblr site1 so my Tumblr followers can conveniently follow what I write from their Dashboards. This also frees me up to reblog things to my hearts content on Tumblr without cluttering up my main site.
I look forward to continuing to develop relationships with my fellow Tumblrites.
Captivating one hour lecture by Brian Cox on Quantum Mechanics. This is one of the best public science lectures I have ever seen. Using one of the largest uncut diamonds ever discovered, Brian delves into the structure of the universe and explains how diamonds bigger than our Sun can be formed.
Special celebrity volunteers, like Simon Pegg, help Brian convey the physics. I love how he offset the technical parts of the talk with humour. Brian Cox is, in many ways, the next iteration of Carl Sagan.
I wish the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) created more programs like this.
(via scienceisbeauty)
I was interviewed this afternoon for CTV's National Affairs about recent work that has been done (not by me) at Cornell University building an invisibility cloak in time. The interview was cut short due to a last minute addition of a cabinet minister, so I didn't get to use my Moses analogy. Next time.
I have been invited to speak at TEDxWaterloo this coming March. Last year event was inspirational. I am excited to take part in this conference, and have something special planned.
It is good to see that one of my favourite musicians, Roberta Hunt, will also be performing at this event. Applications to attend this event are now open as well.