What Are Your Favorite Science or Math Blogs?
We asked our PF Advisors to tell us what their favorite science or math blog is (other than PF Insights).
We also have a physics blog list here.
Here are their responses…
Backreaction by Sabine Hossenfelder http://backreaction.blogspot.com/ because of deep physical insights explained in lay terms.
Terry Tao’s math blog:
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/
That a person of his stature is so helpful to us mere mortals I think is amazing. But there is a very egalitarian spirit here in Australia where he was born and that has obviously rubbed off I think to the benefit of all. He could have gone to Harvard or any university to do his undergrad and Masters – but remained at a humble local university, Flinders University in Adelaide.
As an aside they have a very interesting interdisciplinary math/science program for years 10 and 11:
https://www.asms.sa.edu.au/
Would like to see a calculus subject though – but it must be integrated into it because in grade 12 they assume you already have done basic calculus – that’s the stage 2 they talk about. Also I think for the people going to that type of program they should complete the equivalent of calculus BC in grade 11.
https://telescoper.wordpress.com
In the Dark by Telescoper for its excellent musical taste :)
One of my favorite science blogs is Derek Lowe’s In the Pipeline blog. The blog is written by a chemist working in drug discovery and covers topics related to chemistry, biology and the pharmaceutical industry. Particularly entertaining is his “Things I won’t work with” series, describing some of the crazies compounds chemists have ever worked with in the lab, full of tales of exploding lab equipment, incredibly smelly compounds, and Satan’s kimchi.
Résonaances
Not very active recently, but usually a good overview for interesting topics in particle physics.
Not Even Wrong, by Peter Woit. Always entertaining.
I like the Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/
and Nature’s blogs with their daily newsletter Nature Briefings
Then there are some German ones from Spektrum der Wissenschaft (the German version of Scientific American) and the German Physical Society
https://scilogs.spektrum.de/
http://www.pro-physik.de/view/index.html
Sean Carroll’s Preposterous Universe: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/
John Baez’s Azimuth https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/
The n-Category Cafe https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/
BadAstronomy –Â https://www.syfy.com/tags/bad-astronomy
ZapperZ –Â http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/
I have a BS in Information Sciences from UW-Milwaukee. I’ve helped manage Physics Forums for over 22 years. I enjoy learning and discussing new scientific developments. STEM communication and policy are big interests as well. Currently a Sr. SEO Specialist at Shopify and writer at importsem.com
As this has been somewhat expanded to also include help sites, I feel comfortable mentioning Math Help Boards.
Some of the discussions there would fit well in a blog, and it deserves more traffic.
Last year, there was an informal cooperation with PF to provide math challenge problems (see here and scroll down).
It was coordinated by @Ackbach .
(Note: I just post there sometimes – like certain others here – and am not otherwise affiliated.)
1. https://www.quantamagazine.org/
2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/
3. https://gonitsora.com/
4. https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/
5. https://www.space.com/
6. https://anthonybonato.com/
The Math Doctors – Both as a blog & as a help site. It's excellent
Discover Magazine has a pretty good blog
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/
For Physics Teaching ideas,
on occasion, I visit
https://www.wired.com/author/rhett-allain/
https://arundquist.wordpress.com/
https://fnoschese.wordpress.com/
One of my favourite science blogs (unfortunately relatively inactive over the past year or so) is Three Toed Sloth (https://bactra.org/weblog) by physicist-turned-statistician Cosma Shalizi, due to the breadth and the range of topics he covers (from physics to statistics to complex systems to the social sciences).
Related to his blog is his Notebooks, which is a collection of books, articles, and websites of a wide range of topics on science and others;
http://bactra.org/notebooks/
Another good physics-related blog that is not mentioned is https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/ by Brian Skinner. While it's not that active anymore, it has some really nice explanations of various concepts in physics.