A researcher named Gray and his research about combinations of clothing — that’s the possibly vexing heart of this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams — with dramatic readings by Harvard physicist Melissa Franklin — tells about: Fifty shades, by Gray— “The Science of Style: In Fashion, Colors Should Match […]
Tag: Physics
The Hercules Number: How a Dimensionless Physical Parameter Got Its Name
I did not conceive or give birth to the Hercules Number. But I did name it. Here’s the story. In science and mathematics, we often get to name things. To help with exposition, sometimes we essentially have to name them, because it can help us do a better job of explaining things. In fact, we also enjoy […]
Peano and the cat, and the earth
More from the history of cats and physics, as explained in the Skull in the Stars blog: Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932) is not well-known to the general public, but he was a formidable voice and researcher in mathematics, publishing over 200 books and papers during his lifetime…. When Peano encountered the problem of the falling cat in […]
Rejoice? Run? Hide? The Dawn of Experimental Econophysics
Everything can be explained, to some degree, by marrying economics to physics. This book does that: Experimental Econophysics: Properties and Mechanisms of Laboratory Markets, by Ji-Ping Huang [pictured here], Springer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-662-44234-0. The author explains: “Experimental Econophysics describes the method of controlled human experiments, which is developed by physicists to study problems in economics […]