Comments on: An Update from the Googleplex

By: The Perils of Poor Science Journalism | Cosmic Variance

The Perils of Poor Science Journalism | Cosmic Variance — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 15:38:29 +0000

[...] Monbiot quotes such an expert – Gavin Schmidt, a well-known climate scientist, blogger, and all-round good guy to have a beer with. His claims about the Stefan-Boltzmann equation have been addressed by someone who does know what he’s talking about, Dr Gavin Schmidt of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He begins by pointing out that Stefan-Boltzmann is a description of radiation from a “black body” – an idealized planet that absorbs all the electromagnetic radiation that reaches it. The Earth is not a black body. It reflects some of the radiation it receives back into space. [...]

By: Cosmic Variance

Cosmic Variance — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:56:02 +0000

The Perils of Poor Science Journalism

When I lived in England and when I go back to visit, I often treat myself to two newspapers — The Guardian, for reasonable reporting of the national and international news, and The Daily Telegraph, for its crossword, to which I am particularly p…

By: adam

adam — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:13:42 +0000

It’s all because I stopped teaching physics in the UK and, indeed, left the UK altogether. The country is now officially screwed as a result.

One bright note is that the IOP ‘Advancing Physics’ course is good; like the Nuffield Physics course from which it came, however, it requires teachers who are really good at physics and who are also brave enough not to go for the obvious courses like the joke that EDEXEL offers.

Schools with enough well-qualified teachers of physics do pretty well in terms of physics throughput. The real problem, I think, is that there aren’t enough of those people in physics education and the problem, already really bad, is going to get a lot worse as the babyboomers retire. As a capitalist pigdog, I’d say that the payscale should be broken and specialists in great demand should be paid a wage sufficient to attract them into the job; this wage will be significantly higher than the payscale, which is, apart from one or two points for ‘recruitment and retention’, uniform across subject specialisations. That’s tough luck for PE teachers and English teachers and the like (who are more in surplus) but I don’t see how the problem can be reversed otherwise and the sooner the better, because less A Level students of physics means less applicants for physics at University which means less people qualified to teach physics and around and around.

By: Belizean

Belizean — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 17:58:47 +0000

Thanks for checking in. OFF TOPIC: Any chance that you'll be commenting on these related recent headlines from the UK? Physics too tough for today's pupils Physics student numbers in decline Physics fails to make the grade in our classrooms Concern over decline in physics A farewell to physics? Irresistible decline of physics Apologies if you've already discussed this extensively.

By: ‘Round the Bar Campfire » And then there was Science FOO Camp!

‘Round the Bar Campfire » And then there was Science FOO Camp! — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 23:17:17 +0000

[...] This weekend there’s an interesting extension of FOO going on at the Googleplex called sci foo. This is, as far as I know, only the second time FOO has been directly extended, being co-organized by O’Reilly folks (the first was Pooh Camp at Disney in March). [...]