How-to-Teach
drorzel | April 22, 2011A few months ago-- just before the paperback release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog-- Amazon started providing not only their Sales Rank data, but also sales data from Nielsen BookScan. Of course, the BookScan data is very limited, giving you only four weeks, and the Sales Rank data, while available over the full published life of any given book, are presented as a graph only with no way to extract them as a data table. You'd have to be some sort of obsessive nerd to make a quantitative comparison between them.
So, anyway, here's the data I got for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
This…
drorzel | April 12, 2011I'm in last-minute-revision mode here, made mroe frantic by the fact that SteelyKid developed a fever yesterday, and had to be kept home from day care. I did want to pop in to note that I will be giving the Natural Science and Mathematics Colloquium at St. Mary's College in Maryland tomorrow, Wednesday the 13th. This will be the "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" talk, described for the colloquium announcement as:
Quantum physics, the science of extremely small things like atoms and subatomic particles, is one of the best tested theories in the history of science, and also one…
drorzel | April 7, 2011A few weeks ago, I gave a talk based on How to Teach Physics to Your Dog for the University of Toledo's Saturday Morning Science program. At that time, their local PBS affiliate recorded the talk, for use on their very nice streaming video site, Knowledgestream.org. My talk is now up, and the video is hopefully embedded below:
I haven't listened to the entire thing, but I watched the first 10-15 minutes, and it's pretty good. the sound is coming from a microphone on my shirt, so you can't really hear any of the audience reaction (I got some good laughs in appropriate places), and in places…
drorzel | March 18, 2011Just a quick reminder that I'll be giving my "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" talk (same basic one from Tuesday night) as part of the Saturday Morning Science program (pdf) at the University of Toledo tomorrow, Saturday the 19th. The talk will be at 9:30, with breakfast beforehand. If you're in the vicinity, stop by and hear about some cool physics. My cold is starting to improve slightly, so I should be audible, and I've added at least one Ohio-related joke to the talk, so you don't want to miss that.
In only vaguely related news-- indeed, it's probably only of active…
drorzel | March 14, 2011I've still got work to do today, but I did want to pop in quickly to note that I'll be giving my "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" talk tomorrow night at 8 p.m. in the Coykendall Science Building Auditorium, at SUNY New Paltz. It's part of the Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association meeting, and has also been plugged in the local paper.
If you're in the area, and looking for something interesting to do, stop by and say hi, and learn a bit about why quantum physics matters to the dog on the go.
drorzel | March 2, 2011Another shameless self-promotion post, but since I was confirming some arrangements this morning, I thought I'd throw up a post, so:
- On March 15, two weeks from yesterday, I will be giving a talk for the Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association at 8pm on the campus of SUNY-New Paltz. If you're in the downstate NY sort of area, and want to know what your dog should know about quantum physics, stop on by.
- On March 19th, two weeks from this Saturday, I will be doing the same presentation at 9:30 am at the University of Toledo, as part of their Saturday Morning Science program (warning: PDF). If…
drorzel | March 1, 2011Blogging will continue to be minimal, as I'm buried in grading, and feeling significant time pressure regarding the book-in-progress. I thought I'd pop up briefly, though, to provide a look at the current status of the book-in-progress.
The way this process works (or at least has worked for me) is that I write up a proposal describing what I plan to write about and giving some samples. For both books, this has included one full chapter worth of prospective text, plus a bunch of dog dialogues for other chapters. My agent then shops this around to publishers, one of whom buys it and sets a…
drorzel | February 27, 2011A few lines of dialogue that I wrote today:
"So, the treats I eat represent the matter falling into the black hole, while my poop--"
"You are not coming to my class and pooping to demonstrate Hawking radiation. Don't even think about it."
"I guess that means you don't want to hear my take on the black hole information paradox, then?"
My life is very strange.
drorzel | February 9, 2011I haven't been as relentless about flogging How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (now available in paperback!) as I was last year, because it gets kind of exhausting. I do have a vanity search set up on Google Reader that points me to the occasional review-- this one, for example, so I still see the occasional positive comment, which is good for a boost in a difficult week at work.
Of course, the vanity search is world wide, which means it also picks up mentions of the international editions, such as this Italian blog (oddly, it gets my employer wrong-- I should check the Italian edition and see…
drorzel | January 9, 2011A reader from the UK, James Cownie, was kind enough to send this picture of the "New and Bestselling" shelf at a WH Smiths " at one of the service stations on the M20." You might not recognize the cover immediately, but in the #11 spot on that list is occupied by How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, the UK version of my book. Or, given how well it's doing there, perhaps I should start referring to the cover pictured in the left column of the blog as "the American edition..."
Anyway: Woo-hoo!
drorzel | January 6, 2011I've reached a point in the book-in-progress where I find myself needing to talk a little about particle physics. As this is very much not my field, this quickly led to a situation where the dog asked a question I can't answer. But, hey, that's why I have a blog with lots of smart readers...
The question is this:
What are all these extra particles for?
Or, to put it in slightly more physics-y terms: The Standard Model contains twelve material particles: six leptons (the electron, muon, and tau, plus associated neutrinos) and six quarks (up-down, strange-charm, top-bottom). The observable…
drorzel | December 15, 2010As previously noted, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is selling very well via the Guardian's online bookshop, among other UK venues. It's doing well enough that I might need to start referring to the original text as the American edition of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog...
There's a nice ironic twist to the Guardian aspect of it, though, in the form of a review by that paper that I hadn't previously noticed until this book business summary brought it to my attention. It's a blisteringly bad review, basically dumping hate all over the talking-dog conceit. Which,…
drorzel | December 10, 2010I'm currently working on a book about relativity, but I still spend a fair amount of time thinking about quantum issues. A lot of this won't make it into the book, because I can't assume people will have read How to Teach Physics to Your Dog before reading whatever the relativity book's title ends up being, and because explaining the quantum background would take too much space. But then, that's what I have a blog for...
Anyway, the section I was working on yesterday concerned causality and faster-than-light travel, specifically the fact that they don't play well together. Given Tuesday's…
drorzel | December 9, 2010How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog continues to sell very well. The vanity search today led me to this, screen captured from the Guardian newspaper in the UK, which sells our book in its online bookshop:
Woo! Take that, biology!
Yeah, yeah, I should be so lucky as to squeak onto the list in 150 years. Still, it's kind of a hoot to see that list.
drorzel | December 7, 2010Today is the official release date for the paperback edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I wanted to write up something cool about quantum physics to mark the occasion. I looked around the house for inspiration, and most of what we have lying around the house is SteelyKid's toys. Thus, I will now explain the physics of quantum teleportation using SteelyKid's toys:
"Wait, wait, wait... You're not seriously planning to explain something quantum without me, are you?"
"I could hardly expect to get away with that, could I. No, I'm happy to have your contributions-- the book is about…
drorzel | November 26, 2010Today is "Black Friday," the semi-ironic name given to the day after Thanksgiving when major retailers roll out Incredible! Deals! to draw shoppers in at an ungodly early hour. Personally, I don't plan to come within a mile of a mall today, but if that's what floats your boat...
Of course, if you're thinking of gifts for a person interested in science (and if you're reading this, you ought to be...), you could do a lot worse than to look at this list from GeekDad at Wired, which I'm sure you'll be shocked to notice includes How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. If your holiday shopping takes you…
drorzel | November 19, 2010I keep forgetting to mention this here, but a while back I was contacted by a tv host in California about the Goodnight Moon post. Anyway, I will be appearing via Skype tomorrow morning at 9:20 my time on the Good Day Sacramento program, to talk about bedtime stories, dog physics, and such things. Internet fame continues weird.
So, if you're an insomniac in central California, looking for something to do at 6:20 in the morning, tune in. I believe it's also available via live streaming, if you're not in the Sacramento area and want to see it live.
I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to…
drorzel | November 16, 2010Fall term classes ended yesterday, officially-- my last class was Friday-- so I'm shifting over to spend more time working on the sequel to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which involves talking to Emmy about relativity. Progress has been slower than last time, largely because the previous book was written while I was on sabbatical and before SteelyKid was born. But there's also a structural issue that's giving me some problems.
This is partly a matter of familiarity with the material-- I'm a low-energy physicist, so I've never needed to worry all that much about relativity. A bigger issue…
drorzel | November 9, 2010I haven't been doing these as regularly as I was earlier in the year, but here are a few interesting bits of news about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
LA FISICA SPIEGATA AL MIO CANE, is now available. That's the Italian edition, which Google translates to something like "Explaining Physics to My Dog." Emmy is disappointed in that translation-- she was hoping it had something to do with spaghetti, preferably with meat.
This appears to be a review of the Chinese edition, though I can't read a word of it, and Google Translate isn't really up to the task, rendering one whole paragraph as "Back…
drorzel | November 5, 2010I haven't been flogging it as hard as in some past years, but the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is still going on, though it wraps up on Tuesday. To date, we've raised just over $1,300 to support education in needy schools, which is great, and thanks to all those who have donated.
If you haven't donated yet, and have some cash, there's still time to win fabulous prizes, including the naming of one of the example animals in the forthcoming sequel to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog after a pet of your choosing. One animal will be named after a pet chosen by the biggest single donor (the…