Family-Friendly tribulations

Today I was part of a session on family-friendly policies in academia (policies that promote healthy policies that allow faculty to not have to choose between family and work). My role was small – I recorded a digital video of one of the presenters because she is currently on maternity leave and was...

Increasing Science Literacy requires Clarity and Passion

Today I attended a pair of excellent presentations by award winners Gerry Wheeler and Neil deGrasse Tyson (shown with me at AAS last January). Both, in very different ways, challenged the audience of physics (and astronomy) teachers and professors to not just instill in their audiences the facts of science,...

Getting Real Research out of Your Consumer Telescope

Today at AAPT, I gave an 8 hour workshop on using small telescopes to do real research. Since I don’t think any of you were there, I want to share with you what I covered. Below is the content and links from the web-text I created for the workshop. The links will connect you over to my campus website...

Meeting time again

This morning I got up at 3am, contemplated how much more I like going to bed at 3am, and then loaded myself into a car to go to the airport. Several hours of travel and one nap later, I am mostly coherent in Greensboro, NC where I am attending the summer meeting of the American Association of Physics...

Black holes take a bite out of galaxies

Astronomers usually try to educate the public that black holes do not go around actively eating the hearts out of galaxies. Usually. On July 24, astronomers announced that in the early days of the universe large numbers of young supermassive black holes actually spent their days feeding on galaxy cores....