At a high level, the name of the game in building dark matter detectors is to find cleverer ways of measuring progressively smaller energy deposits. Nowadays that means things in the eV scale, which even a decade ago would have been unheard of. So with that in mind, I was at a talk recently about … Continue reading “Gentlemen, start your envelopes”
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The UChicago Physics department has a lovely annual end-of-year tradition, a dinner party called Forget The Year, where the 2nd year PhDs put on a comedy show. For my year (2016-2017), in addition to the usual skits and such, we had cute table-mats made up with games attendees could play during the event. For this … Continue reading The hardest (weirdest?) crossword you’ve ever seen.
The Physics GRE is often a stumbling block for aspiring graduate students. I dare say the most number of forum posts and long blurbs of advice I read on the internet during my own application was about the PGRE, which is unfortunate because from everything I've heard it is neither the death knell (with the … Continue reading Physics reGREts
Every year Edge online magazine poses a grand, sweeping question to its members (people drawn from the upper echelons of society and academia). 2017's question was: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known? The answers span the gamut of the sciences and social sciences and are certainly worth a read (though with … Continue reading Who says being a public intellectual is hard?
I want to relate a cute story that’s stuck with me since I heard it about a decade ago – one that really highlights the value of thinking outside the box. George Roter, co-founder of the wonderful NGO Engineers Without Borders, gave a talk at the University of Toronto where he related a story of … Continue reading Thinking outside the box
Karthik Ramanathan 