A Letter to Readers - Conferences

Fine Readers of PiPT, 


Sorry for the long delay in blog posts! It always stresses me out when I haven't written something in more than four days, and it's been a good 3 weeks since this site got any love, so you can imagine my state. But I think that it was worth it, because I was hard at work getting ready to attend...

¡THE 78TH MEETING OF THE SOUTHEASTERN SECTION OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY!

Or 'SESAPS' for short. 

This conference has all sorts of stuff going on, with posters and info sessions on every physics topic that you could think of, and some that you couldn't. For example, one of my personal favorite poster titles is "A Statistical Analysis of the Environments of Extragalactic Water Masers". Tell me that's not gonna be awesome...

My own project is one of the simpler ones. Everyone knows how much I love coffee, right? 

"Why is this empty!? Did I ask you to take away my
lifeblood? Because that's what you've done."

Well, I, along with some other caffeine-addicted scientists, wondered: would adding creamer early or later keep my coffee warmer? And how can I use science to solve the mystery? Well, it turns out that Newton himself was way ahead of us. Newton's Law of Cooling gives us everything we need to know to calculate and observe the temperature drop in a cup of coffee, before and after creamer is added. Doing this for early trials (adding the creamer right after the coffee is poured) and later trials (having a quick chat about faster-than-light travel, then making a pyramid out of the creamer packets, and then adding creamer) gave us the definitive answer we needed to present an actual scientific argument about when one should add creamer. 

PROTIP: Use a spoon.

The project is more for educational purposes than anything, but it's a good way of teaching a fundamental physical principle, while also drinking coffee. It also served as a good introduction into the world of Physics conferences. It goes like this: you apply to present a poster. They say yes. You make a poster...
And then change that poster...
And then change that poster...
And then change that poster...
And then change that poster...
And then you print it, because the conference is tomorrow. A wonderful process, it is. If you want to see the poster yourself, and unravel the mysteries that lie within a cup of coffee, follow this link. It's pretty neat, I'll admit. 


I'm headed to the conference for three days; I'll be updating this site while I'm there to let you know what's happening, and I'm sure I'll have plenty of stuff to write about when I get back. But I just wanted to let you know, dear reader, that I didn't forget about PiPT. I'm here for you.


Keep on rockin'. Catch you on the flip-side. 


Keep an eye on the site this week, as well as my Twitter feed 'bminortx', for cool science-y things that might pop up at the conference. It's a lot of scientists in one place; something's bound to happen...