Physics Blogging Round-Up: Bounces, Literacy, Rule Changes, Lone Geniuses, and Rugby

A longer-than-usual gap between recap posts, but thanks to some kid illnesses and the Thanksgiving holiday, not all that many new physics posts over at Forbes:

— Football Physics: Checking The Odds On Wild Bounces: A backyard experiment to see how often a bouncing football takes a big hop. Follows from this rant and prompted this post on rotation.

— Physics Demands Many Kinds Of Literacy: Some musings about the many different ways physicists process information, prompted by graphs generated for the previous item.

— Football Physics: How Would Changing The Laws Of Physics Change Football?: Either whimsical or goofy, depending on your perspective. Some speculation on how altering fundamental physics principles might change the way football is played.

— General Relativity And The 'Lone Genius' Model Of Science: In honor of the 100th anniversary of Einstein's completing General Relativity, some musing about whether the theory really counts as a work of singular genius.

— Football Physics: Safety Rules and Unintended Consequences: One sort of popular suggestion for fixing the concussion problem is to remove pads, using rugby as an example. While rugby has fewer ultraviolent collisions than American football, that's because of fundamental differences in the game. Differences that, ironically, are partly due to rule changes meant to improve safety.

So, there you go: the usual assortment of random stuff. I will now return to fretting about preparing for my TEDx talk tomorrow.

Source: Physics Blogging Round-Up: Bounces, Literacy, Rule Changes, Lone Geniuses, and Rugby