Chad Orzel

Chad Orzel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College specializing in atomic, molecular, and optical physics. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park, under Nobel Laureate William Daniel Phillips. He is the author of the popular science book on quantum mechanics entitled How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog.^[1]

Early life

Chad was born and raised in central New York state, near Binghamton, and attended Williams College. After graduating, he spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, studying quantum mechanical effects in Bose-Einstein Condensates.

Career

In addition to teaching and doing research at Union, he maintains a physics-oriented weblog, Uncertain Principles as part of the ScienceBlogs project run by SEED magazine. He's also on Facebook and Twitter. In August 2003, Orzel and his wife Kate Nepveu adopted Emmy, a German Shepherd mix, born in 2002. A fictionalized, talking version of Emmy plays an important part in Orzel's books How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, acting as an audience surrogate who interrupts Orzel's text to ask questions, and appears a willing student despite her constant disappointment at the scientific concepts' lack of practical application to her main interests, which mostly revolve around chasing rabbits and squirrels.

Personal life

He lives in Niskayuna, NY with his wife, Kate Nepveu, their two children, and their dog Emmy.

Publications

• Orzel, Chad, "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog". 2009. ISBN 1-4165-7228-7
• Orzel, Chad, "How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog". 2012. ISBN 0-4650-2331-2
• Orzel, Chad, "Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist". 2014. ISBN 978-0-465-07496-9

References

External links

• Orzel's Union College web site
• Curriculum Vitae
• The Book: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
• Orzel's Blog, Uncertain Principles
• Orzel's Twitter feed
• http://dogphysics.com/