This paper represents the main result from my Ph.D. Thesis: power spectra with exponential dependencies in frequency (semilog format) can be caused by Lorentzian shaped pulses in the time series of the measured fluctuating quantity. Knowing this can provide a big step in the understanding of how transport processes evolve in a plasma, for example, […]
Spontaneous Thermal Waves in a Magnetized Plasma
This paper holds a special place in my heart as my very first primary-author paper. It was also very fun to write because the observation (discovery!) was not an intended goal of my Ph.D. thesis project. My thesis was about wave fluctuations in a tiny plasma filament. Along the way, however, I found that there […]
The Buddhist Temple We Never Knew
During a recent trip to my hometown of Stockton, California (on Google Maps) I visited the local Buddhist Temple. It was quite a coincidence that just before leaving for Stockton I saw an episode of Road Trip with Huell Howser in which he toured the city. That episode visited some areas of Stockton that I […]
Albert Einstein’s Logic Puzzle, Maybe
I have been introduced to a logic puzzle that was supposedly written by Albert Einstein. The version I originally read came from the Brain-Fun website. The story that goes along with the puzzle is that Einstein claimed only 2% of the population would be able to solve it. Some of the other people reading the […]
Funny Physicists on Television this Fall
If you are only going to watch one television show this fall… then watch something educational on the Discovery Channel or, better yet, the Science Channel. If you are going to watch at least two shows this fall, then add “The Big Bang Theory” to your list†. Last Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of […]
Force on a Charge in the Presence of a Conducting Plane
Perhaps the most common procedure in the study of any field of physics is to calculate the forces on various objects. Studying force problems in electrostatics is the foundation for developing a strong understanding of electrodynamics. In this topic an example calculation of the force on a charged particle in a system with another particle […]