On some days, being a physics professor is a real slog — many-hour meetings, struggles with grant funding, endless emails, and near-futile attempts to eke out time for actually thinking about science. But there are other days in which it’s really awesome. Today, for example, I got to cart around an elephant femur. Here it … Continue reading Then we played bones, and I’m yelling domino
Our Physics Department Colloquium this week is on a topic I’m fond of: the analysis of super-resolution microscopy images. This occurrence isn’t surprising, since I invited the speaker, Alex Small, with whom I co-wrote a recent review paper on the subject. The problem that superresolution microscopy confronts is that it’s hard to see tiny things. … Continue reading I should think of a title involving the words “Small” and “Microscopy”
How does a department recruit graduate students? Like many physics departments, ours brings accepted prospective students to visit, funneling most of them into two days during which we try to convey information about our research, the university, the area, etc. Faculty in different research areas think of ways to spend an hour or so describing … Continue reading Grabbing graduate students with graphs
I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Geometry of Design, by Kimberly Elam, which I found randomly on a shelf in our Art and Architecture library. The book has many great examples of design and composition, and thoughts on the wonders of golden rectangles, pentagrams, and other shapes. It devotes a few pages to this … Continue reading Konstructing a poster
The Eighteenth Elephant 