2010 Science Book Challenge

Gosh, would you look at the date: December already! How time flies when one is enjoying reading some nonfiction books for the Science Book Challenge!

Indeed, it's that time of year again (a little past, actually) when we announce the opening of our annual Science Book Challenge, this time for calendar year 2010. This is our third year already.

The official home page is here. As a new thing this year (meaning I finally figured out how), you can also sign up for the challenge by joining our Science Book Challenge 2010 Facebook group. That would be the place to go if you want to talk with other challengers, write on our wall, upload a picture of yourself reading a science book, ask some questions — whatever! It's just another weapon in our arsenal, part of our insidious plot to ensnare more people in the self-edifying act of reading about science, and then writing about it. Don't forget: writing a note about the books you've read is an important part of the challenge. Even more don't forget: please let us know when you've written a note so we can add it to our growing collection.

The Challenge for 2009 was very successful, with a gratifying number of new challengers compared to 2008–about 3 times as many. Now the heat is on: can we get 3 times as many this year and sign up 200 challengers?

Of course we can, but y'all are going to have to help spread the word and publicize the challenge. This is all in aid of furthering the science-literacy mission of Ars Hermeneutica, the nonprofit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt company that is my life these days. (Yes, you can certainly contribute money — we can always use money — but I'd really like your participation.)

I'm hoping this year to add two more challenge features: add incentives for challengers, and reorganize the book-note collection with new software that will facilitate expanded browsing functionality. That will take money, for which we'll be writing proposals; contact me if you'd like to help.

Now, to help you in your publicity, we have the gorgeous new "Science Book Challenge 2010" graphic (seen everywhere above). Use it freely on your blog, or anyplace else webpages are served, to let people know about the challenge, and don't forget to include a link to the challenge homepage please.

The beautiful image that I used for the graphic is actually a photograph, taken by Gavan Mitchell and Phil Taylor (source) using the Schlieren technique, a method that reveals temperature & density differences in the air. What you see in the photograph is convection currents in air above the flame of the butane lighter.

The Schlieren phenomenon has been known for several centuries, apparently used as an analytical tool since Schlieren photography was invented by the German physicist August Toepler in 1864 to study supersonic motion. It involves focuses light and a knife edge to block the beam partly, probably creating interference fringes in the wave-front of the light that are very sensitive to density variations* in the illuminated medium.

Back when I was in graduate school and we discussed Schlieren photography, nobody really understood in detail how it works. We could wave our hands and say it was interferometry and such (like I did above), but now one knew how to design an optical system from first principles, nor quite how to adjust the mysterious knife-edge that was so necessary to the system. It still seems somewhat mysterious, but here are two pages where people have a go at explaining (one and two).

Regardless, it makes for some fascinating and revealing photographs.

But enough of that. Let's get reading!
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* Actually, it's going to be controlled by changes in index of refraction, but those changes are brought about by changes in density through thermal expansion in this instance. In other words, it's basically an interferometric technique to reveal small density variations.

Posted on December 3, 2009 at 21.40 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science

One Response

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  1. Written by Melanie
    on Friday, 11 December 2009 at 12.46
    Permalink

    Hurrah, Science Book Challenge time again! Where did the last year go? Oh well, another fascinating button to share around in 2010!

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