6 days agoDaylight Saving TimeLast Sunday, we all switched from standard time to daylight saving time, losing an hour of sleep in the process. Should we stop this changing of clocks every six months? We have three options: 1) we can continue to switch between standard time in the winter and daylight saving time…Daylight Saving Time4 min readDaylight Saving Time4 min read
Mar 10Physics Girl has Long CovidI’m a fan of Dianna Cowern, better known as Physics Girl, who makes Youtube videos about physics that would be helpful for readers of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. Three years ago I featured several of her videos in a blog post. Cowern is suffering from a severe case of long Covid. I’m going to turn this week’s post over to Simone Giertz for an update on Cowern’s health. Originally published at http://hobbieroth.blogspot.com.Dianna Cowern1 min readDianna Cowern1 min read
Mar 3Cobalt Blues: The Story of Leonard Grimmett, the Man Behind the First Cobalt-60 Unit in the United StatesI recently read Cobalt Blues: The Story of Leonard Grimmett, the Man Behind the First Cobalt-60 Unit in the United States (Springer, 2013), written by Peter Almond. The treatment of cancer using the isotope cobalt-60 is now obsolete, but in the era just after World War II it was cutting-edge…Leonard Grimmett4 min readLeonard Grimmett4 min read
Feb 24A Simple Mathematical Function Representing the Intracellular Action PotentialIn Problem 14 of Chapter 7 in Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I chose a strange-looking function to represent the intracellular potential along a nerve axon, vi(x). It’s zero everywhere except in the range −a < x < a, where it’s Why this function? Well, it…Mathematics3 min readMathematics3 min read
Feb 17Abraham Liboff (1927–2023)Oakland University physicist Abe Liboff died recently. A notice from President Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, published on the OU website, stated: It is with deep sadness that I inform you of the death of Professor Emeritus Abraham Liboff who passed away on January 9, 2023. Dr. …Abe Liboff3 min readAbe Liboff3 min read
Feb 1050 Prominent Medical PhysicistsIn 2014, to mark its 50th anniversary, the International Organization for Medical Physics published a list of 50 medical physicists who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of medical physics over the last 50 years. …Medical Physics3 min readMedical Physics3 min read
Feb 3Felix Savart, Biological PhysicistI’m fascinated by scientists who make the transition from medicine to physics, which is the opposite of my own transition from physics to medicine. One example is Félix Savart. In this blog post, I provide several excerpts from a 1959 article by Victor McKusick and H. …Felix Savart4 min readFelix Savart4 min read
Jan 28The Preface as PoetryI mentioned before in this blog that I’m reading Will and Ariel Durant’s eleven-volume masterpiece The Story of Civilization. Recently, in Volume Nine about The Age of Voltaire, they discussed Alexander Pope, the eighteenth century English poet who, among other things, translated the Iliad into English poetry using iambic pentameter…Iambic Pentameter3 min readIambic Pentameter3 min read
Jan 20The Invisible RainbowOver Christmas break, I read The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, by Arthur Firstenberg. What can I say about such a book? First, if the conclusions in my own book — Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? How Electricity and Magnetism Affect Our Health — are true…Arthur Firstenberg6 min readArthur Firstenberg6 min read
Jan 13Happy Birthday, Robert ResnickRobert Resnick, physics textbook author extraordinaire, was born 100 years ago last Wednesday (January 11, 1923). A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute website states Robert Resnick is professor emeritus at Rensselaer and the former Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Science Education, 1974–93. …Physics2 min readPhysics2 min read
