Month: June 2015

I think I stumbled across this a while back but I can’t remember where. The classic freshman physics question is, assuming a uniform density for the Earth and a perfect, frictionless tunnel cut through the Earth in a straight line, how long would it take to travel between any two points on the surface of …

Gravity Tunnels, Falling through the EarthRead More

I’m trying to catch up on my reading by skimming through back issues of American Journal of Physics when I found this one in the March issue: “Impact behavior of a superball,” Am. J. Phys. 83, 238-248 (2014). It’s a fun little article that covers some of the basics that you can find elsewhere like how the …

Superball Physics!Read More

I recently picked up an older Thinkpad T400 that had Windows 7 installed. After a bit of angst, I went ahead with my plan to scrub the disk and install Fedora 21. Why the angst? Well, I had originally thought of using Windows 7 32-bit to control my older Canon Digital Rebel XT cameras. They are …

Testing Astro Video Capture in LinuxRead More

The authors point to teaching programming languages as opposed to logic as being a seriously weak spot in computer science education. While the “Hour of Code” has a lot of appeal and can introduce people to computing, they point out that new computing languages are continuously being developed to try to solve new problems. They …

Teach Foundational Language Principles (CACM May 2015, pp 30-31)Read More

This article initally caught my attention with it’s graphic and caption “SCIENCE:Gravity makes haveier things fall faster.” The author goes on to recount her experience with just such a poster in a local elementary science fair and her lack of success in having it taken down. The point: we have started pushing instruction of computing …

Education: What Are We Doing When We Teach Computing in Schools? (CACM May 2015, pp24-26)Read More