Publicity
drorzel | December 20, 2009I was Googling for "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog" last night, to check whether a review of said book that I know is coming has been posted yet (side question: Does anybody know a good way to exclude the umpty-zillion versions of Amazon and other sellers from this sort of search? Most of the results are just product pages at one online retailer or another.). The review I was looking for isn't up yet, but I did find a goodreads page, a nice entry at the Cincinnati public library calling it "abstract science delivered painlessly," and this pre-publication alert from Library Journal.
"Wait a…
drorzel | December 19, 2009I gave a talk last night to the Albany Area Math Circle, a group of high-schoolers who are interested in science and math, and enter and do very well in national math competitions. I think there were 48 kids there last night, which was pretty impressive.
I gave basically the same talk I gave at Boskone on the Many-Worlds Interpretation, including reading the dog dialogue from Chapter 4. I made an effort to update the SF references a little, to things that people born in the early 1990's might recognize. (Wow, I feel old.)
The talk was probably a little too abstract for the audience, and I…
drorzel | December 18, 2009How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is now listed as "In Stock" at Amazon, so it's the perfect time to order a dozen or so copies for your last-minute holiday gift needs.
"But, wait," you say, "why do I want to teach my dog physics? Particularly quantum physics-- why does anyone need to know that?"
The answer is: "Lasers." Lasers are pretty awesome, right? Let's ask an expert:
If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!
OK, maybe he's a bad one to ask. Still, lasers are pretty awesome, and lasers…
drorzel | December 17, 2009Quantum physics can sometimes seem so arcane that even humans don't need to worry about it, let alone dogs. It's actually tremendously important to our modern world. In fact, if you're reading this on a computer (and how else would you be getting it?), you have quantum physics to thank for it.
Computers are based on millions of tiny transistors manufactured on chips of silicon. These transistors are combined together to make "bits" that can be in one of two states, which we call "0" and "1." Manipulating these bits lets us do mathematical operations, write books about dogs, and watch videos…
drorzel | December 17, 2009Checking in to see whether the Amazon page for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has been updated (it had an older version of the cover copy yesterday morning, but that's been fixed), I see that the "Buy Together" box has been updated. It now says:
Customers buy this book with The God Engines by John Scalzi
That's much better than what we had yesterday. Thank you, Amazon, for some higher-quality recommendations.
drorzel | December 17, 2009Yesterday's reason to love quantum was the CCD sensor, which relies on the photoelectric effect to take digital pictures. Sticking with the photoelectric theme, today's first quantum-enabled technology is the photovoltaic cell, the basis for solar panels.
Photovoltaic cells convert light into electricity, essentially via the same photoelectric effect used in CCD's. A photon of light comes along, and knocks an electron out of some material (typically something silicon-based), and that electron is used to create a current that can power electrical devices. There's some tricky business involved…
drorzel | December 16, 2009I've been writing a bunch of publicity copy for the book the last few weeks, and one of those things is a list of reasons why every dog should know about quantum physics. I've been planning to chop that up into a bunch of individual blog posts in the run-up to the book, but the Washington Post beat me to (one of) the punch(es):
Getting a digital camera for Christmas? Before you fire it up to capture Uncle Wally's fateful fifth trip to the punch bowl, take a moment to picture this: You've got a genuine scientific marvel in your mitts. In fact, it took nothing less than two Nobel prizes and a…
drorzel | December 16, 2009While I'm thrilled to see How to Teach Physics to Your Dog listed on Amazon, I am distressed to see it offered as a pair with something called The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart. I'm not linking to the Amazon page for that book, because it's a giant pile of crap, and I wouldn't want anyone to accidentally one-click-order it after following a link from my page.
If you should choose to look it up, you can read bits and pieces of it via the "Look Inside" feature, and it's true that the opening chapter or so is a reasonable-sounding description of the physics of quantum entanglement,…
drorzel | December 15, 2009It's exactly one week to the release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and to celebrate, I'm setting off on an expedition to the local mall(s) in search of Christmas presents. May God have mercy on my soul...
Anyway, I wouldn't want you to be without entertainment while I'm off helping the economy, so here's another little video to mark the one-week anniversary. This one is the dog dialogue from Chapter 5, on the quantum Zeno effect, and while it doesn't have puppets, it does feature some happy dog video, before settling down into still pictures and graphics:
We're at the point, now…
drorzel | December 14, 2009In response to my post about Amazon sales-rank tracking, Matthew Beckler created just such a tracker:
That's the last few days' worth of hourly rankings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, as of 10am Eastern. Enormous dork that I am, I find this really fascinating, and not just in an absolute-number sense (because, really, these numbers don't mean much of anything).
The big thing that jumps out at me is the quantization of books. You see a bunch of sharp, downward-going jumps in the graph, which presumably correspond to discrete book purchase events. In between jumps, there's a slow upward…
drorzel | December 8, 2009John Scalzi sends along photographic proof of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog working for a dog who isn't Emmy:
This isn't quite an "in the wild" shot, as it's not at a store or a store-bought copy (John wrote a blurb for the book, so he got sent a copy), but we're getting close. The official release date is just two weeks from today. It may well start showing up in stores before then (it's not in the Barnes & Noble store in Colonie yet, though I swear I did not go in there just to check that...). You can, of course, order it from Amazon, as several people have obviously done already,…
drorzel | November 30, 2009The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is three weeks from tomorrow, but a couple of new reviews have been posted, one linkable, the other not so much. The linkable one is from one of our contest winners, Eric Goebelbecker, at Dog Spelled Forward (an excellent name for a dog-related blog):
Quantum physics can be some heavy stuff, and this book teaches you the basics without dumbing it down or putting you to sleep. Professor Orzel has a gift for funny dialogue and straightforward explanation. In addition to the entertaining conversations with Emmy, there are fascinating…
drorzel | November 24, 2009The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is exactly four weeks from today. So here's a dramatic reading of Chapter 3 to mark the occasion:
I've put this up before, but I edited it to remove the URL, which was apparently a deal-breaker for booksellers. And yes, I will post about something other than the book, Real Soon Now...
drorzel | November 24, 2009During this year's DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised books as prizes to people who contributed to my challenge. Now that the finished books are ready, it's time to congratulate the winners.
Lauren Uroff wins one copy for giving the largest individual donation of the people who forwarded me receipts (the largest overall contribution was from Hewlett Packard, but we're not giving books away to faceless corporations). The person who posts as tcmJOE was the winner of the random drawing (the person has a real name, but I'm not sure it's public. He also used an email address that may be a spam…
drorzel | November 23, 2009The pictures I posted last night aren't really the greatest for seeing the cover of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so here's a shot of the book jacket spread out on my desk:
This isn't the greatest, either, but it does give you a sense of the key features of the jacket design, which I like a lot:
First of all, there's the quizzical looking black dog on the cover. I've known about this image for a while, but I really like the dog's expression. I wish I could reliably get Emmy to do that and get a picture of it.
The second element, and the first new to me, is the yellow spine with the…
drorzel | November 22, 2009Look! How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is a real book:
Emmy says, very seriously, "You will buy a copy, won't you?"
Of course, like everything else in this house, SteelyKid had to grab a copy:
She whipped through to the last page pretty fast:
Emmy says "What'd you think, human puppy?"
SteelyKid says "If I knew how to read, Daddy's book would be my favorite book ever. People who can read should definitely buy it."
You heard the kid and the dog...
drorzel | November 19, 2009It's not often that I regret having a cell phone that is just a phone, but this is one of those occasions-- I stopped by my publisher today to talk about marketing and publicity, and record a video for the web, and got a stack of finished copies of the book, hot off the presses. If I had a cell phone camera, I'd post a picture, but I don't, so you'll have to settle for a plain-text "Woo-hoo!"
On an only vaguely related note, our cultural activities in NYC will include some college hoops, as there's a preseason "tournament" taking place at Madison Square garden tonight. Syracuse vs. Cal, and…
drorzel | November 3, 2009... until the release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. The official release is set for December 22nd, though the books are set to start printing in about three weeks. Exciting, isn't it?
Are you excited about the upcoming release of _How to Teach Physics to Your Dog_?(survey)
If you're still wondering what all the excitement is about, let me direct you to the book previews page at dogphysics.com, where you can download a PDF of Chapter 1, and watch a little video I made to go with a dramatic reading of Chapter 3's dog dialogue. There will probably be more previews in the next few weeks--…
drorzel | November 2, 2009This year's DonorsChoose Challenge entry came up just short of $8,000, at $7,976. Many thanks to everyone who donated.
As promised during the challenge, I will be giving away one advance copy of the book (either a real copy when they start printing in a few weeks, or a galley proof if you want one Right Now) to the largest individual donation, and one to a donor chosen at random from the set of donors who sent me email asking to be considered.
At present, the list of people who have asked to be part of the drawing is much smaller than the list of people who donated. So, I'll hold off on the…
drorzel | October 10, 2009In the last couple of weeks, I have suddenly acquired a rather full travel schedule for the coming months. The odd thing is that none of these trips are book-publicity junkets-- they're all basically professional-type appearances, several of them taking place before How to Teach Physics to Your Dog hits stores on December 22. My schedule so far:
October 24, Waterloo, Ontario: I'm a late addition the Quantum to Cosmos Festival, as a panelist for a discussion on "Communicating Science in the 21st Century." This will also be webcast and recorded for television (my itinerary includes a "Speaker…