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This blog is a portfolio of my many and varied interests, from cosmology and astrophysics to measurement science and adventures and photography. Life should not about surviving, it should be about thriving. Life 201 encompass some of my thoughts on … Continue reading →

The Teledyne LeCroy WaveAce 2034 is a “gateway drug” into digital scopes. It has the front panel interface typical of traditional analog scopes, but with lots more buttons and features which enable us to tap into its powerful digital signal … Continue reading →

In a horizontal wine tasting, you sample different types of wines from different grapes, possibly from different wineries and from different years. You are sampling a shotgun variety of sometimes wildly varying textures, aromas and flavors in the hopes of … Continue reading →

The TiVo set top DVR (digital video recorder) box started the revolution of time shifting TV watching habits and fast forwarding through commercials. Like “Kleenex” and “Xerox”, the name of the product has been turned into a verb, as in … Continue reading →

Thomas Greenslade wrote a very simple article for the Physics Teacher in March 2011 sharing a beautiful, wooded model from the L E Knott Apparatus Company which illustrates, at a glance, the principle that the area of a circle is … Continue reading →

On Thursdays, April 8, 2010, Bill Parkhurst of Cisco Systems, presented a talk on the Smart Grid at the Kansas City section of the IEEE in Overland Park, KS. Fundamentally, Bill said, the Smart Grid is whatever Steven Chu, the … Continue reading →

In a horizontal wine tasting, you sample different types of wines from different grapes, possibly from different wineries and from different years. You are sampling a shotgun variety of sometimes wildly varying textures, aromas and flavors in the hopes of … Continue reading →

On May 20, 2009, Prof Patricia Burchat, the Chair of the Department of Physics at Stanford University, presented the last lecture in the 10th season of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures. She gave what I have found to be the … Continue reading →

The Hubble Constant, which describes the velocity-distance relationship for galaxies, is the foundation of modern cosmology. It establishes the time and distance scale of the universe and the dynamic nature of the galaxies since the beginning of time. It is … Continue reading →

Harrison Schmitt, the last man to walk on the moon, spoke to a full house at the Linda Hall Library on Sept 2, 2009, as part of the “To the Moon and to the Planets Beyond” lecture series. Schmitt left … Continue reading →

If you missed out on summer camp as a kid, as I did, it’s not too late. But this time, you don’t have to rough it. For the last few years, I’ve attended various star parties during the summer. These … Continue reading →

This is part 1. The properties of telescopes are often presented in a confusing way. In fact, it is simple if you keep in mind what a telescope is really doing.

When we look at a few Hubble photos of distant galaxies we may get the impression the universe is a static place. Other than the occasional supernova brightening, the galaxies we see haven’t changed much over the hundred years of … Continue reading →

Astrophysicists sometimes use familiar words, but in a very different way than we are used to. Take for example the term metal. To an astrophysicist, a metal is any element with an atomic mass greater than Helium’s. That’s because only … Continue reading →