Lab Out Loud®

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Dr. Michelle Thaller

Our guest this week is Dr. Michelle Thaller.  A research scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Thaller is currently the Manager of the Education and Public Outreach program for the Spitzer Space Telescope.  Thaller talks to us about Spitzer, infrared light, and our origins in stellar corpses.

• Profile from Spitzer
  
• Profile from Cool Cosmos
• SIRTF Profile
• NASA Profile
• Entry in IMDB
• Wikipedia entry on Dr. Michelle Thaller

• Spitzer Space Telescope
  
• Video: Infrared: More than your Eyes can See
• Animation from NASA’s SpacePlace
  
• Post from Bad Astronomy
• Chandra X-Ray Telescope

I have always had a deep respect for people who can take complex ideas and make them seem profoundly simple and elegant. Instinctually, I’ve always felt that wisdom and eloquence are related. It’s not just what you say, but now effectively you communicate the inner workings of your mind to another human being.

-Dr. Michelle Thaller, from Spitzer Profile

Videos about our origins in stars:

• The Elements: Forged in Stars, from NOVA on Teachers Domain
• Cosmos: The Lives of The Stars (Carl Sagan) – Episode 1, season 9

Direct download: LOL29.mp3

Yesterday, the Planetary Society sponsored a talk with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.  It was absolutely amazing, and you can scan through my tweets (and Dale’s) to see what was said and done.  Here are a few pictures.

Dale and I will be at the NSTA 2009 Conference on Science Education in New Orleans.

On Thursday, I will sporting my Lab Out Loud T-shirt, and Dale will be wearing his on Friday – come talk to us as we are out and about during the conference.

You can also follow our tweets to see what we’re doing at twitter.com/laboutloud (or twitter.com/bbartel and twitter.com/basler).

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Jennifer Ouellette

Our guest this week is Jennifer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange.  The Exchange provides entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines.

Jennifer talks to us about her work with the Exchange, in how scientists advise pop culture – including movies like The Watchmen, and TV shows such as Fringe and The Big Bang Theory.

About Jennifer Ouellette
In addition her work with the Science and Entertainment Exchange, Jennifer is the author of Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics and The Physics of the Buffyverse.  Her work has also appeared in New Scientist, Discover, Salon, Symmetry, and Physics World, among other publications.

• Jennifer Ouellette’s Website
• Cocktail Party Physics
• Twisted Physics
• Articles in the Popular Press, Interviews
• Contributing Writer to the Huffington Post
• Oullette’s Essay on “Big Bang Theory” from Symmetry

Science is not something only smart nerdy people do. It’s central to all our lives, and it’s all around us, all the time. Reveling in one’s ignorance of this fact is just — well, kinda sad. (from “Shame on Gawker” post)

Links

• Science and Entertainment Exchange Symposium Slideshow
• Science and Entertainment Exchange on Facebook
• Science Fact, Hollywood Fiction, from the American Institute of Physics
• NSTA’s Blick on Flicks (latest episode: Nuking the Fridge, Odd Magnetism, and Issues with Inertia in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
• David Saltzberg, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA and science advisor for ‘The Big Bang Theory‘
• USA Today: “There’s a Science to CBS’ ‘Big Bang Theory’
• From Forbes.com: 10 Films that Would Flunk Science Class

Advising Science in ‘Watchmen’

• The Science of Watchmen
• Jim Kakalios, School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota
• From Scientific American: How Scientifically Accurate is Watchmen?
• The Science Behind ‘Watchmen’ from Forbes.com
• Getting it Right: Hollywood Collaborates with Scientists to Improve Factual Accuracy

Direct download: LOL28.mp3