Physics for future Presidents

Resources

On this page we have collected a fair variety of science sources that you might find useful to browse, either once in a while or more carefully when trying to choose a nice essay topic. Needless to say that these sources greatly vary in quality, depth, accessibility, and trustworthiness. Some of these sites have an agenda (and be it only to get you excited about science), some of them have a bigger entertainment value than scientific content. But then, you cerainly know that the world wide web is a big jungle, and exploring it requires a constantly alert brain. If you come across sources you find interesting in the context of this course and which are not yet listed, let us know!

Needless to say, the appearance of a link on this page does not imply that the instructors of the course or CMU condones all content of these pages, or any pages they subsequently link to. (We strongly suspect there is more legaleze, but we trust that any responsible user of our pages knows what we mean by this disclaimer. Irresponsible users are accordingly banned from our pages.)

Some useful newspapers which regularly feature science-related issues

  1. The New York Times, and its science and technology sections.
  2. The Los Angeles Times, and its science and technology sections
  3. The Economist, and its science&technology section
  4. The Washington Post, and its science, climate&environment, health, and technology sections.
  5. The Huffington Post, and its science and technology sections.
  6. And for some local flair: The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and its science and environment sections.

There also exist a variety of popular science outlets that are worth perusing:

  1. Scientific American, and their various blogs and podcasts.
  2. NOVA, and on their physics blog.
  3. Discover Magazine, and its podcasts.
  4. Science Daily.

Professional science journals are difficult to read for laymen, but some famous ones have interesting general discussions and op-ed insights that only arrive in the main stream press in a sort of diluted way. Be brave, have a look:

  1. Nature, and its News&Comments section. They also have a podcasts.
  2. Science, and its News section. They, too, have a blog and podcasts.

Finally, you might also enjoy some of these:

  1. HowStuffWorks.
  2. NOAA (the National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration).
  3. NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration).
  4. Discovery Channel.
  5. Popular Science.
  6. Science Blogs.
  7. Phys.Org.
  8. New Scientist.