What makes a cow a cow? A cow has four limbs, a pair of horns, a tail, and eats grass (among other things). What makes an electron an electron? An electron is arguably defined by two traits — its charge (the stuff that makes up electricity), and its spin (the…

On why we need to think beyond entropy to understand our experience of the arrow of time. In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, we follow the journey of Billy Pilgrim, a poorly trained, fatalistic soldier in the United States army in World War II. On the night of his…

In the pandemic summer of 2020 I found myself introspecting about something important to me — why do I do science? In an attempt to answer this question, I dove into the history of science, science funding, and my childhood, and wrote this essay. A version of this article first…

The story of my first scientific paper. Rummaging through some old notebooks, I found notes from my first ever research project, done as an undergraduate researcher. Once I recovered from the burst of nostalgia, with the added perspective of six years of graduate school, I realized that I was then…