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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: Optics
Streets of the optical scientists!
This post is a repost of some proto-blogging I did on my department web page when I was a post-doc in Amsterdam. The web page is gone, now, so I thought I’d revise the essay significantly for the blog here. … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Travel, [PhysicalScience]
21 Comments
Optics basics: lasers!
One of my goals in blogging has been to run a series of posts covering the “basics” of optics, namely those concepts that form the basis of an understanding of the more advanced topics investigated by researchers today. Though I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Optics basics
9 Comments
The Discovery Place does optics!
This post involves a little bit of boasting! For the past month, the Discovery Place science museum in Charlotte has been displaying a small interactive optics exhibit targeted at 8-14 year-olds as part of their “Explore More Stuff” series. The … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Personal
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Freaks & geeks: optical freak waves in the laboratory
One of the most fruitful and intriguing avenues for developing novel scientific research is through cross-pollination with other fields of study. This is one of the reasons I’m proud of my excessively liberal arts-focused education, as well as one of … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Physics
7 Comments
Invisibility physics: Kerker’s “invisible bodies”
(This is a continuation of my “history of invisibility physics” series of posts. The earlier posts are: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI) The history of invisibility physics truly began with the concept of … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Optics
17 Comments
You could learn a lot from a ducky: the van Cittert-Zernike theorem
(Alternate titles considered for this post: Ducktoral degree, Send in the ducks, Proof by in-duck-tion, Duck Tales, Duck-ing the issue.) One of my specializations in optics is the theory of optical coherence, which is the theory that characterizes the random … Continue reading
Posted in Animals, Optics
29 Comments
Singular Optics: Light chasing its own tail
(Title stolen shamelessly from my postdoctoral advisor, who I assume will forgive me.) As I’ve noted numerous times in previous posts, one of the fundamental properties that characterizes wave behavior (i.e. that makes a wave a wave) is wave interference. … Continue reading
Posted in Optics
29 Comments
Michelson and the President (1869)
I’m currently working my way through the book The Master of Light: a Biography of Albert A. Michelson (1973), written by one of his daughters, Dorothy Michelson Livingston. I typically find the beginnings of biographies to be rather slow-moving, with … Continue reading
Posted in History of science, Optics
7 Comments
Wave interference: where does the energy go?
Last week was a relatively lousy one for me, but it was made up in part by getting a good question from a student on waves and interference after class. It’s really nice to get a question that indicates a … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Physics
33 Comments
My talk on “Forgotten milestones in the history of optics”
I just got finished giving a talk to the graduate students of my department on “Forgotten milestones in the history of optics”. The talk seemed to be very well-received, and I’ve already had faculty suggesting that I should give it … Continue reading
Posted in History of science, Optics
15 Comments
Skulls in the Stars 