The Cardboard Fort Project

This past weekend Jaime and I (along with our friends Nancy and Nyree) attended the Cardboard Fort Project, an event run by Chat Perdu Productions and sponsored by the Awesome Foundation Toronto. I took along my camera and shot some video which I have edited into a little short below. Unfortunately, my battery died before I could get footage of the final forts (which were awesome). Luckily there are plenty of photos up on Flickr already.

The event was organized by Sherwin. From the Awesome Foundations blog post on the night, Sherwin describes the event as:

> Like a cat, I think my favourite toy was always plain brown cardboard boxes. The holy grail when I was a kid was to get those discarded refrigerator boxes, because they were so big and creamy smooth. You got the feeling that you could make anything out of that. The idea behind this night is to bring back that feeling.

A big shout out to Sherwin, Chat Perdu Productions, and the Awesome Foundation for putting on such a successful (and awesome) event!

Quantum Physics & Harry Potter

Update: Both shows are now sold out! Two free evenings of magic and science!

Magician Dan Trommater and I are teaming up once againfor a pair of fun, fascinating evenings exploring how the magic of Harry Potter mirrors the real magic of the quantum world. Levitation, teleportation and more—discover how these phenomena exist not only in Harry Potter's world, but in the quantum realm that underlies our world too.

Here is a trailer for the talk:

This is a non-profit educational event aimed at anyone who loves the magic of science. Dan and I held a similar event last year in Toronto that was a huge success. This year's show will be even better!

SPACE IS LIMITED Reserve your free ticket here.

Thursday July 14, 6:30pm - 8:30pm Friday July 15, 6:30pm - 8:30pm Princess Twin Cinema, Waterloo, ON

For more information, visit or check out the Facebook event page.

Sponsored by the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo.

Happy Birthday Mr. President

Last week my friend and occasional arch-nemesis, Dr. Robert Prevedel, turned 30. Here is a video montage I took to mark the occasion.

The first thing Robert did to celebrate his new found old age was to participate in a triathlon. Happy birthday and best of luck in the coming year!

Dr. Heel Click I presume

This past Friday was my PhD convocation ceremony at the University of Toronto. It was great to have so many of my family members there! We were called up two-by-two during the ceremony, and I heel clicked as I was being presented. Fortunately my mom caught the moment on video. 

Double-Slit Rap: The Disco of Space and Time

Our double-slit experiment work has now been eulogized in song! The BBC Radio 4 program, Friday Night Comedy recently rapped about our work. What is most amazing is that they got the physics right and managed to sneak in a dig about the Bond movie Quantum of Solace. Skip to 5:30 to where the song begins. [audio 

I would love to see what kind of remixes people can come up with. I bet there are some funny Youtube movies that could be made.

Listen to my Quirks and Quarks interview about the double-slit experiment

My interview on Quirks and Quarks is now available online.  

I am pleased with how the interview went.  I was probably interviewed for about 15-20 minutes which the producers did an excellent job condensing down to 10 minutes.  One of the things cut though was the acknowledgement that the work was done at the University of Toronto in Aephraim Steinberg's lab (my PhD advisor).

A big thanks to everyone who helped me prepare for this, and a shout out to Colin Hunter and Kim Luke for helping to arrange the interview.  If you are interested, here is a posting that lists all of the media coverage our paper has received. I also wrote a post about my experience being interviewed on Quirks and Quarks.

Finally, here is a picture of me listening to the interview with my signed postcard from Bob McDonald.

My interview with Quirks & Quarks

I was recently interviewed by Quirks and Quarks, CBC's popular science radio show, about some of our recentwork looking at the double-slit experiment. The interview should air this Saturday  (June 4th) at noon so be sure to tune in. You can listen online at the CBC Radio website, or tune in later via their archives or podcast. I have always been a big fan of the show so it was a thrill to be given the opportunity to be interviewed by Bob McDonald. I took the bus into Toronto and arrived at the CBC studios downtown. I was then given a visitor pass and escorted up to the Quirks & Quarks offices where I met the producers and the host. I was really impressed by the whole operation; these are people who really care about science and bringing it to a larger audience. Everywhere I looked there was science related memorabilia.

Bob McDonald is a fantastic interviewer. Funny, smart, and charming with the ability to instantly put you at ease. The recording studio is covered with various posters he has acquired. The crown jewels of this poster collection are two from one of the control rooms at the Russian space agency. While Bob was visiting as part of a documentary, he asked where he could get a poster like the one hanging on the wall as a souvenir. One of the people working there plucked the posters off the wall and presented them to him. Very cool and very hospitable. You can see the posters on the wall to the right of me in the photo below.

At the end of the interview I got a signed post card. I was given my choice of postcard, but this one had the best story behind it. A (different) copy of it was taken up into space. Above Bob McDonald's desk is a framed photo of this postcard floating in space above the Earth. This made my inner nerd very happy.

Incredible time lapse of the night sky from the Very Large Telescope array

Popular Science linked to this amazing video. Taken at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), located at the top of a mountain in Chile's Atacama Desert, these are some of the coolest time-lapse pictures I have seen of stars in the night sky. The four telescopes are part of a stellar observatory; they work together to achieve a resolving power much greater than any of the individual telescopes. From the ESO website:

The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy at the beginning of the third Millennium. It is the world's most advanced optical instrument, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, in groups of two or three, to form a giant 'interferometer', the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The light beams are combined in the VLTI using a complex system of mirrors in underground tunnels where the light paths must be kept equal to distances less than 1/1000 mm over a hundred metres. With this kind of precision the VLTI can reconstruct images with an angular resolution of milliarcseconds, equivalent to distinguishing the two headlights of a car at the distance of the Moon.

My favourite part of the video is when one of the telescopes shoots a laser up into the night sky. As an aside, this is where parts of the last James Bond movie, A Quantum of Solace, was filmed.

The ESO has a Youtube channel with a number of excellent videos describing various aspects about how the observatory works.

Here is another time lapse I found filmed entirely with a fisheye lens at the Paranal Observatory also located in Chile.

Scientific Coasters

I almost forgot about these. At the recent Cafe Scientifique event I spoke at they had these awesome science themed coasters. They go nicely with my newly acquired beaker mug.