Media: Radio, Television, Magazines and the Web

Exploring Magazine

I have been the head of the editorial board of Exploring Magazine for a decade.

Electronic Astronomy

My article appears in "Exploring Space," the Spring issue of the Exploratorium Magazine.

I visit astronomer Mike Bolte at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea and end up getting the visit of a lifetime. I ride to the top of the telescope to add liquid nitrogen to the CCD! Then observing on a night with fantastic seeing.

Telescopes on Mauna Kea photo by Paul Doherty

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

From 1997 through 2000 I wrote a quarterly science column with Pat Murphy.

It's a great honor writing for a column that was once authored by Isaac Asimov.

Gravity for the Adventurous, how to fall faster than g.

Close Encounters of the Gravitational Kind, how does a gravity assist work?

Messing with your Mind Memory research

Mirror, Mirror, Mirrors and right-left reversal

The Shadow Knows, seasons and the analemma

 

Exploring Magazine on the Web

That's the way the ball bounces

My article from the "Exploring Sports" magazine is reprinted online. Learn that balls bounce off the ground because the ground pushes them up!

See also the bouncing balls activities on the Exploratorium's baseball site.

Skateboard science on the Web

The floor of the Exploratorium became a skateboard funpark on June 12, 1999

I helped develop the Exploratorium's web activities exploring the Physics of Skateboarding.

Here are my versions of these Explorations.

The first activity is The Physics of the Ollie.

The second is Turning in the Air.

I was science adviser to the Exploratorium on its websites about the science of bicycling and baseball

Web - Bicycling

High wheeled bicycles

Spokes

Gear Ratios

Braking

Drafting

Web - Baseball

How Curveballs curve, web TV

Knuckleball physics

The atmosphere and the baseball

The sweet spot

Scientific Slugger
a shockwave simulation of a baseball trajectory

On Television

When the Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter the Exploratorium did a special event.

KRON TV came to the Exploratorium to interview me after my public lecture.

Paul on David Letterman

Late Night with David Letterman came to San Francisco May 1996

The show was filmed in the large theater in the same building as the Exploratorium.

I was invited to do science demonstrations:

I had David Breathe helium then I breathed sulfur hexafluoride.

David grabbed a Van degraaf generator and made his hair (piece?) stand up.

Then I finished by flying the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher powered human air puck.

I had a great time, Dave and his staff were the best!

Eclipse! Success Disaster

The story of what happened at the Exploratorium on the day in 1991 when a partial solar eclipse was visible from San Francisco.

On the Web

Turbulent Landscapes

A traveling exhibition from the Exploratorium on the subject of Complexity.

Antenna theater put together an audio CD to accompany the exhibition, My voice is mixed in with those of the artists who made the exhibits, with writer Pat Murphy and others. On the day they recorded me, I had a cold. The audio tour requires that you have the real audio player on your computer.

Visitors carried around a CD player and keyed in the number on the exhibit. Here you can listen to the playful pieces weaving art, science and rap? put together by Antenna Theater.

I think Turbulent Landscapes is the best Exhibition I have ever seen at a science museum!

Mesocyclone

Fountain of Instability

Chaotic Pendulum

Fluttering

Aeolian Landscape

Rift Zone

Field Stone

Blue Whirlpool

Circular Wave Umbrella

Erosion Channel
Here you can really hear that Pat Murphy wrote the book "Patterns in Nature"

Convection Cells

Tectonic Basin

Paul's Homepage

Scientific Explorations with Paul Doherty

© 1999

25 Apr 99