blog

I’ve been so busy lately with so many things on my plate, that I’d be upset with myself if I was spending much time blogging. On the other hand, there’s a lot to mention, so I’ll emphasize some interesting links with quick blurbs.

• There are a lot of new resources for science on the web, including Cool Molecules: A Molecular Structure Explorer (thanks to Egon for the pointer).
• There’s even a blog listing free science and video lectures provided online.
• Princeton’s Art of Science Competition has their 2006 gallery up. I commented on this last year.
• Beauty is not just at Princeton. There’s also Pictures from the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) courtesy of Iowa State University
• I can hardly post those two without mentioning Cornell’s Center for Materials Research which had a similar “art in science” contest with various advanced microscopy techniques in 2005 and more recently, this year.
• Cornell also had a recent article about good physicists making good musicians, although I think this goes for much of mathematics and science in general, not just physics.
• Relating art and science, Wired magazine recently ran an article on “What Kind of Genius Are You?“, dividing science and artistic breakthroughs into “conceptualists” — peaking early, but making groundbreaking changes, and “experimentalists” — blooming late after lifelong tinkering.
• Finally, not to be missed is an article from the New York Times on “Transforming the Alchemists,” revisiting how experimental science (particularly chemistry) has been influenced for better and worse by alchemy.