I wrote four months ago about the strange, nonsensical proposal from a technology company, Reflect Orbital, to put mirrors in space to reflect sunlight onto the Earth at night, which customers could use to power solar panels to generate electricity. The cost: $5000/hour for the light of one space mirror. As I calculated in my … Continue reading The idiocy of space mirrors continues
If you’ve ever wondered: What has the enrollment in the introductory “Physics with calculus” (PHYS 251) course at the University of Oregon (UO) been over the past 30 years? What about Business Administration 101? You’re now in luck, because I’ve made an online dashboard that allows you to plot the enrollment history for any UO … Continue reading A historical course enrollment visualizer
What makes a college course popular or unpopular? I’ve long been interested in courses for non-science majors that satisfy “general education” requirements, their aim being to foster overall scientific literacy and to convey an understanding of topics that are important to society. I often teach such courses at the University of Oregon, for example a … Continue reading Online courses, supply and demand, and academic integrity
I wonder if fraudulent or foolish investment schemes are more likely to attract victims if the schemes involve high technology, saving the planet, or, especially, both. This came to mind when reading a baffling article published in the New York Times two days ago [1], about a company that wants to put mirrors in space … Continue reading Space mirrors, solar panels, fools, and their money
There are basic facts about the living world that we learn when very young. One is that mammals and birds are warm-blooded. More technically, mammals and birds fall into the category of endotherms, organisms that use internally-generated heat to maintain some preferred body temperature, and I always supposed that the omission of other creatures from … Continue reading Some Like it Hot: Plant Edition
Once again, highlights of the books I read in the past year, including a tale told by a beech marten, memoirs by people much older than me, and a recurring theme of work. (Previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, …, 2015.) Memoirs I live in Eugene, Oregon, nicknamed “Track Town USA” and the birthplace of Nike, … Continue reading The Year in Books, 2025, in which I learned about work
On a Sunday evening in March, nine months ago, I sat on an airport floor in Los Angeles staring at my laptop, attending an online meeting of the University of Oregon’s faculty union, facing the possibility of going on strike the next day. In August, I wrote emails trying to persuade the university administration not … Continue reading Remembering the year when I almost went on strike
About two years ago, I read a string of books that were all published in 1965. It was a fun exercise and I found some wonderful books I might not have otherwise read (described in this post). Why not repeat this for a different year? I picked 1937. In part, I wanted something more distant … Continue reading Reading Like It’s 1937
Does homework matter, in a college gen-ed science course? I’ve been thinking more about this question over the past year or two, as AI tools are able to quickly and correctly answer nearly all questions I could pose to students (see this 2024 post, for example, or the examples below). I often teach general-education courses … Continue reading Some data on homework and its correlations
Last term, I taught The Physics of Solar and Renewable Energies, a course for non-science-majors at the University of Oregon. I’ve taught this course several times and I wrote a blog post about it in 2021 (link). Here are some thoughts on this Spring’s iteration. Enrollment for this course fluctuates between about 50 and 150 … Continue reading Course Recap: Physics of Solar and Renewable Energies, Spring 2025
The Eighteenth Elephant 