My History of Physics Blogging
Everyone needs an origin story, right? Well, this is the origin of my physics blog. It’s only been 10 years — but 10 years on the internet is like a whole lifetime. At least it feels that way.
Let’s get to it.
Before the blog.
You need to know the setting to understand the beginning. I don’t know the exact year — but I will pretend it is 2007. At that time, you could find some cool stuff on Slashdot or Digg. Yes, both of those were fairly popular.
There were also some awesome physics blogs back then. Again, I don’t know the exact start dates — but surely Bad Astronomy was around and it seems like Chad Orzel has been blogging forever (both of these bloggers are still active too). Oh, remember Cosmic Variance?
Of course, Science Blogs also existed during this time. It was kind of a big deal.
The first blog wasn’t a blog
Why did I start writing? I sort of remember this. It was because of physics class. If you have even taught physics, you know what happens. Students get behind and then near the end of the semester they ask:
Is there something I could do for extra credit? What about a physics project?
Oh, that sounds nice. Yes, do that — and they did it — and it was terrible. It wasn’t terrible in that they didn’t understand physics, it was terrible because they didn’t understand the idea of a project. Maybe they needed an example, right? OK. I will do this.
I’m not exactly sure what I wrote about, but maybe it was a video analysis of a truck stopping a landing plane (from a TV commercial). Oh, it’s still sort of online (but all the equations are borked). I’ll just show the top part so you can see what it looked like.
I’m not sure if this page helped students, but I sure as heck had fun writing it. It sort of became addicting — so I wrote some more stuff. Yes, I did the physics of Line Rider. Do you remember that?
OK. I should point out the problems with Internet Archeology — borked pages. If you look for the Line Rider physics stuff, you will find it. There’s a link to it on Science Blogs. It’s also on WIRED. Both were imported at some point, but as those pages change the content management system things get messed up. Yes, borked.
I have the original images and I could reconstruct everything. But it takes time. Someday…
Conflict and Dot Phys
Something happened that made me angry. I don’t want to point fingers, but it’s part of the historical archive. My original physics stuff was on a university physics server. It was all there. But at some point the university decided that the online material was like the wild wild west with different departments having different formats for their course pages. Honestly, it was sort of crazy. Here is a view of the physics page at the time (thanks to The Internet Archive).
This page sucked. I had to make those side buttons manually. What a pain in the ass that was.
So, the university moved to a content management system to make all the pages look like they worked together. But this mean NO MORE DEPARTMENT SERVERS. We had to turn off our own pages. But I was sort of angry. I was already getting some pretty good traffic on my physics pages. Turning off the server would just kill that. Fine. It’s unplugged. Are you happy now?
Well, I wasn’t going to quit physics writing — so I moved. I purchased my own server space (I can’t even remember the company) and made my own site. In honor of our previous departmental server, I named it “Dot Phys”. The “dot” was the from www.phys.selu.edu. In fact, we often called this server “dot phys” because there was also a “dot chem” server in the department.
Later, someone referenced my site and called it Dot Physics. That made more sense. Also, after getting too much traffic for several different posts my server would shut down. Fortunately, a good friend of mine moved all of my stuff to a server at his work. That fixed it.
I tried to get a snapshot of this page — but I can’t find a good one. Oh, I should also point out that at some point, I switch from using a html coding program (I was using RapidWeaver) to using Wordpress.
Science Blogs
In December 2009, I moved to Science Blogs. It was kind of a big deal for the following reasons.
- Ummm… they were actually going to PAY me. That was new. OK — the pay wasn’t much. I think it was traffic based and I was making about 50 dollars a month.
- Science Blogs was a serious thing back then. Oh sure, there were a whole bunch of blogs on the site — but I was still there. There was name recognition.
- There was a social media manager. Someone that could help promote blog stuff and help in other ways.
This was a great time for blogging. I should also point out something that people might have forgotten about — comments. Yes, you would write a post and then people would read it. If they liked, they could add a comment down at the bottom. It was fun while it lasted.
You probably notice that comments aren’t that common anymore. They sort of got ugly after a while. But back in the beginning, commenters were like my online friends.
WIRED
In 2010 WIRED decided to start some science blogs. It would be a much smaller group than at Science Blogs (just 9 instead of something like 50).
It was a pretty cool time. As you know, I posted my stuff there for almost 10 years. By my rough estimation, that’s over 1 million words blogged.
At first, this was just like writing for Science Blogs. But it was different. We had an editor. The early blogs weren’t really edited except as suggestions (hey, maybe you should write about this topic — or this intro doesn’t make sense).
The number of WIRED science blogs grew and then got smaller. At the end, I was the only blogger left. Honestly, there were some super great blogs here. Let me just make some random notes:
- Editors. I don’t like reworking my stuff — but having an editor is nice. They give you a reality check on the stuff that you write and fix your stupid errors. It’s really nice having an editor that you trust — I tell them “if you see a mistake and you know how to fix, just fix it. I trust you”.
- In the beginning, I wrote my own titles and put up my own top art. Eventually, WIRED (a collection of people) made the title and put up art. They did a nice job — I think maybe just once I had to tell them to change a title because it was wrong. Oh, they were open to suggestions for the title and the top art. It’s nice having cool graphics at the top.
- What about embeds? In the beginning, I could embed a youtube video or some other thing. But at some point, this wasn’t really allowed unless you got permission from the author of the video. I agree in principle that this is the proper thing to do, but it sure is a pain in the rear to find and contact some of these creators. Sometimes, we couldn’t make contact and that means no embedded content.
- You COULD put python right in the post using trinket.io. This was so cool. The code was in the post and it would run in the post. Bonus, readers could edit the code and run it without leaving.
- Plotly graphs were also embeddable. Awesome.
- At some point, I decided to start up a backup blog — rhettallain.com. It’s a Wordpress site where I can literally just post whatever I want. I started putting educational material there that might not fit too well with WIRED. Also, all of my MacGyver science stuff can go there.
The future
I really enjoyed blogging at WIRED, but everything ends eventually. Right? It was probably because of the pandemic, but Conde Nast (the publisher of WIRED) had to make some cuts. No more contributors — like me. That was it.
But I can still write here at Medium. I like it. You can find all my stuff at Rhett Allain — also, I’ve started my own publication: Geek Physics. What kind of stuff will you find there?
- Physics explanations. Stuff that you would find in a textbook for physics courses (except with better jokes). Oh, but with all the math.
- Physics of popular media — superheroes, science fiction and stuff like that.
- Video analysis of current events or popular videos.
- Wild estimations of mostly impossible things.
- General explainer posts of physics topics (without too much math.
- Numerical calculations and python — because I love this stuff.
I’m still working on the publication, but hopefully it will get more organized as I get more posts.
Oh, but it’s not just writing. I also have two youtube channels.
- My main channel — Rhett Allain. Here you will find MacGyver hacks that you can do yourself and other science demos.
- Physics Explained. I’m going to put all my lecture-type videos here. It’s all physics lessons and physics problems. Lots of math.
Questions and Answers.
I’m going to ask the questions that you really want to ask. That way, you don’t actually have to ask them.
Do you use your blog posts in your classes?
Not really. I always feel weird showing my blog posts to students. Also, we are always so busy with other physics stuff that it’s hard to fit it in. Typically, I will give one “fun” lecture each semester on science fiction or something like that.
Funny story. I was talking about Spider-Man in class and using him as an example for energy when he swings. A couple classes later, a student speaks up in class and mentions that he found something online that he thought I would love. It was a blog post analyzing Spider-Man’s web strength. I said “oh, that’s awesome. I wrote that.” The student was shocked (and apparently didn’t notice the author when he was reading it. It was funny.
What is your favorite blog post. Like ever?
I knew you were going to ask this question. I just knew it. So, I’ve been thinking because it’s obviously a really difficult question. Well, here is your answer.
Another Gravitational Experiment in Angry Birds Space
You know (or you should) that I’m a huge Angry Birds fan. The game was simple and fun. It included some physics — but it wasn’t perfect physics. That means that I get to try and figure out the physics models in the game. Oh, trust me. I did a crap-ton of blog posts about Angry Birds. It was super fun.
This post in particular is great because I really figured out a complicated situation. After that, I built a python model that produced the same results as the game. Really, it’s a tiny microcosm of real science. Collect data, build a model, test the model. All with a game on your smart phone.
What about books?
What about books? OK, I know. I need to put together another book. I like having books published, but I dread the work I need to put into one. Also, I’m not sure what to write for my next one. Here are some options.
- Something about the real science behind MacGyver. I have so much material here, it’s crazy.
- Superhero physics (or science fiction physics). For something like this, I would focus on using superheroes to explain physics.
- Estimations. Yes, just a book of estimations. This would be fun.
- Analysis of real or fake videos and events.
Which one of these do you think would work the best? See how I turned that around? You asked a question and I asked you a question. Take that.
Do people recognize you as a blogger when you go out on the town?
No. Ha. No. OK, there are lots of people that recognize me at physics conferences. That’s always fun.
How about some blogging advice?
Oh, I got you covered with this. Here are some tips.
- Write for yourself. Don’t worry about always finding topics that other people want to read. Write something that you would want to read. That way if no one reads it, you will still be happy with it. If you try to write what others want, you will get worn out very quickly.
- Take a bunch of pictures of pretty much everything. You don’t want to steal pictures from other people, so just get your own. Honestly, you won’t know when you will need a picture of a banana — but you might need it. Also, I upload all my stuff to Google Photos. It makes it easier to search for stuff.
- Use your favorite format. If you like answering your own questions — then do that. Or maybe you are huge fan of animated gifs. Boom. Add them. Oh, there’s a joke but no one will get it? Someone will get it. Use that joke.
I think that’s good for now. Let me know if you have any other questions.
