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Welcome to my blog!
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I'm a Professor of Physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology
Top Ten Stories from Science in 2024
( Belated Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to all readers !!) This list is personal, and claims to be neither complete...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Dec 28, 2024
Endsemesteritis
(This is my 100th post – thanks to all the readers who have stayed with me thus far!!). What is endsemesteritis? Endsemesteritis is a...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Dec 21, 2024
Losing Good Students from Physics
A phenomenon that is common in undergraduate as well as graduate physics education: a student who is quite competent comes across a...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Dec 14, 2024
How to Make Things Disappear: The Science of Invisibility
This post is a review of the book Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not to be Seen by Gregory G. Gbur . (Full disclosure:...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Dec 7, 2024
Roger Penrose: A Biography Appears
(Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!) This post is a review of The Impossible Man , a recent (2024) biography, by the science writer...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Nov 30, 2024
The Layperson's Physics Party Survival Guide
Should you be a nonphysicist and find yourself at a physics party (maybe as a friend or spouse) here are 15 pieces of essential physics...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Nov 23, 2024
'I hate physics' and Other Compliments
Probably like other physicists, I get an interesting range of reactions when I reveal my profession to other people, at a party, next to...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Nov 16, 2024
What's Whose: Assigning Credit in Science
A famous quote, often attributed to Henry Kissinger, says that the tussles in academia are especially vicious because the stakes are so...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Nov 9, 2024
What's in a Name: Acronyms in Science
It's an unwritten rule in science that to attract funding for a project or organization, or to promote a scientific technique or relevant...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Nov 2, 2024
Science and Authority
Science is well known for not being based on authority; truth in science is ultimately decided by experiment (for the natural sciences)...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Oct 26, 2024
The Enigma of Turing
With all the buzz about AI, including two Nobel prizes this year (in physics and chemistry) related to the subject, it was time for me to...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Oct 19, 2024
The Nobel Prize in Physics: 2024
The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, “for foundational discoveries and inventions that...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Oct 9, 2024
Nobel Laureates I have Met
After seeing the substantial interest in my previous post on the upcoming Nobel award announcements (Oct 7-14), I decided to stay on that...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Oct 4, 2024
Anticipating the Nobel Prize
It's almost that time of the year again - the Nobel prizes will be announced 7-14 October (the physics prize on October 8)!! In...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Sep 28, 2024
Edible Lasers
Lasers make for a $20 billion dollar industry and have all kinds of applications: industrial, medical, surveying, communication...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Sep 21, 2024
Between the Lines of the Physics Curriculum
This post is aimed at stating explicitly something that is not always communicated to physics students as they make their way through the...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Sep 14, 2024
A Visit to Raman's Museum
This is a post about my visit to the museum housing the scientific collection of C. V. Raman , the Nobel laureate in Physics, after whom...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Sep 7, 2024
What Theoretical Physicists Really Do
This post is a review of the article ' Beyond The Big Bang Theory: Revealing the Everyday Research Lives of Theoretical Physics Faculty '...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Aug 31, 2024
Peer Review: An Opportunity
The Problem Peer review is a highly contentious topic in academia. This is because papers are published (always) and funds are granted...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Aug 24, 2024
Time (keeping) goes Nuclear
Clocks play an incredibly important role in our lives. This post is about a recent development, based on nuclear physics , which promises...
Mishkat Bhattacharya
Aug 17, 2024
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