Here's a photo of myself made in about 1994. My beard is whiter now, but otherwise I look about the same. This page describes a few of the projects I am currently working on, some related to physics and some related to other topics. Of course, everything is related to physics.

Recently edited and released is the text of an oral history, originally recorded in 1994 when I officially retired. In it are a few descriptive words about the wonderfully yeasty early years of the UCSC campus, along with descriptions of the development of the research here on chaos and nonlinear dynamics. Here is a link to it.

In 1972, Bill Burke, a Professor of Physics and Astrophysics here, whose primary research interest was in the field of General Relativity, had some ideas for simplifying and clarifying the presentation of the Special Theory of Relativity in our introductory courses. He wrote up a set of notes, which he called a "Special Relativity Primer". In subsequent years I collaborated with Bill in expanding his initial draft and making some figures for it, and several of us who were involved in teaching introductory physics courses then used the "Primer" as a text. Bill unfortunately died in an auto accident in Utah in the summer of 1996.

Recently I decided to make the "Special Relativity Primer" available to a broader audience, since those notes were never published. The first seven sections of the fifteen-section "Primer" are now available here. If you would like to be notified when additional sections are completed, let me know.

Here are a few UNIX-based computer programs. One (mkevals) is designed for use by faculty who need to write narrative evaluations for students in their classes. A new version of mkevals (version 2.3, dated December 9, 2005) is now available, with the addition of a version for WINDOWS and improved documentation. (If you want to see what this program does, click here.) Others were written for use by students enrolled in Physics upper division lab courses. Al Kelley's grade program is also availble here.

A new program (called lorenz), designed for any computer with an "xterm" (UNIX or Linux or Cygwin), will produce, in real time, a graph of the Lorenz Attractor. A miniature screenshot appears at the right. It's lots of fun to play with, since there is opportunity for user interaction to change parameters while the program is running. If you look closely you can see that this phase space orbit was started near the lower right-hand corner.

Two additional new programs related to the Lorenz Equations (mklorenz and sonify) are also now available.

Here are three upper division lab manual chapters that I wrote some years ago, entitled "Uncertainty in Measurement: Noise and How to Deal With It", "Least Squares: Fitting a Curve to Data Points", and "Chi-Square: Testing for Goodness of Fit", all available in pdf format.

Here is where you may find a few songs. At the moment, there are just three songs: "To the Gray Whale Ranch", "Dancing on the Brink of the World" (aka the River Song), and "Don't Get Mud on the Carpet". For the first two, there is sheet music, lyrics, and a MIDI sound file to give a (rather crude) idea of what the song might sound like. For the third song there is a pdf containing the lyrics and a basic score, along with an mp3 recording with myself singing it while strumming my banjo.

I expect to be putting up a few additional songs relating to various physics courses as I get around to making up files for them. Have a look. Let me know if you'd like to be notified when I put a new song up.

Here is an interesting mind reader. Try it out. If you can figure out how it works, send me an email.

You can send me email by clicking here.

Here is a page of images and some descriptions relating to a short backpack in the Sierras in late September, 2005. If you have a slow (e.g., dialup) connection, think about going to get a cup of coffee while this page loads. I did not take the trouble to reduce the size of the images, so they might take a while to load up.

If you'd like to read about the two weeks we spent in Austria in 2003 (including singing with the Berkshire Choral Festival), click here. (Physics students please note: There is a nice snapshot of a double rainbow. Before you look: Which way do the colors go for the primary and secondary bows?)

Finally, Here is a link to the website for the Campaign for Sensible Transportation, dealing with transportation related issues in Santa Cruz County. If you want to know whether it's a good idea to widen Highway 1, or whether it's a good idea for us to make use of the rail line, or whether an "Eastern Access" road to the UCSC campus makes any sense, here's the place to look.