Feynman: his birthday, his diagrams and his lectures

Posted on 12/05/2013 by Jon Butterworth

Yesterday was the 95th anniversary of the birth of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. An excuse for an unusual party

At the Guardian.

See also Chapter 8.3 of Smashing Physics.

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There is no alternative!

Posted on 04/05/2013 by Jon Butterworth

By Michael Krämer at the Guardian.

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Should we change the Higgs boson’s name?

Posted on 28/04/2013 by Jon Butterworth

I wrote this piece on the blog about Higgs boson naming, and was then asked to write something for g2. This appeared on the web here (not in the usual Life & Physics slot, hence this post so I can find the link in future). I’m not used to being sub-edited. Can you spot Talking Heads reference they garbled?

In fact, the boson part of “Higgs boson” is arguably more important the “Higgs” part, and is named after Satyendra Nath Bose, the Indian physicist, who worked out that bit of quantum mechanics. There have even been complaints that “boson” should be capitalised. The laws that govern bosons are called Bose-Einstein statistics, but no one knows who the other guy was.

A few days later Tom Kibble responded to the initial Sunday Times story here (which also appeared as a letter in the Times).

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Ask a grown-up: is there anything smaller than an atom?

Posted on 25/04/2013 by Jon Butterworth

And another non-“Life & Physics” article posted here so I can find it. One of the Guardian Weekend “Ask a grown-up” series. Most common response: “You did better than Sir Ranulph Fiennes”…

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