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The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. -
Category Archives: Mathematics
Review of “Mathematical Methods” at Science After Sunclipse!
Just a quick bit of news: Blake Stacey has reviewed my textbook, Mathematical Methods for Optical Physics and Engineering, over at his blog Science After Sunclipse! Although he rightly busts my chops over a number of typos in the text … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics, Personal
2 Comments
Infinity is weird… even in infinity mirrors!
Even very simple optics can reveal very interesting and surprising phenomena, if one looks carefully enough! I was recently looking into the optics of a so-called “infinity mirror”, which in its simplest incarnation is simply two parallel mirrors on opposite … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics, Optics
54 Comments
Jennifer Ouellette’s The Calculus Diaries
Calculus plays a rather paradoxical role in modern society: much of our modern technology and science depends upon it, but amongst the general public it is feared, even despised, and treated almost as magic. This is really a problem, as … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics, Physics
3 Comments
Infinite series are weird — redux!
A bit over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the mathematics of infinite series, and how weird such series can be, considering in particular the behavior of “conditionally convergent series”. A recent post at Built on Facts … Continue reading
Posted in ... the Hell?, Mathematics
14 Comments
The Time Axis by Henry Kuttner
The more I read of Henry Kuttner, the more ashamed I am that I didn’t read all of his works long ago! Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was a versatile writer of pretty much every genre of weird fiction imaginable: science fiction, … Continue reading
Posted in Adventure fiction, Mathematics, Weird fiction
7 Comments
Abramowitz and Stegun online!
Abramowitz and Stegun is a classic reference book which contains all sorts of information about special functions and their integrals. If you’ve ever needed to reference something on the road and don’t have your copy with you, you will be … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics
7 Comments
Infinite series are weird!
I’m in the mood to do something a little more ‘math-y’! A few weeks ago, Tyler at PowerUp did a nice post about the divergence of the harmonic series, and that got me thinking about the weirdness of infinite series. … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics
18 Comments
Spot the math errors!
Via StumbleUpon, I came across this short text page which lists three mathematical ‘proofs’ which seem to violate common sense, listed below. The first is: The second one is: The third one is: Each of these proofs is (intentionally) wrong! … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics
86 Comments
Mathematicians on Mortgages
In a nice little coincidence, recently two mathematics bloggers have decided to give a bit of a description of the subprime mortgage market crisis. Neither is an economist, but that’s probably okay, even preferable, considering it was the economists who … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics
6 Comments
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