A look back at the year online

As I write this retrospective of Physics Today‘s year online, the most viewed item on the BBC’s website is not about the Syrian uprising, the US fiscal cliff, North Korean rockets, or any other momentous topic. Rather, it’s about the villages of Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, which abut each other across the US–Canadian border. Not so long ago, residents of Derby Line and Stanstead were free to walk across the border when they liked. Now they face fines for doing so. They are peeved.

Similarly, the most popular item on Physics Today‘s website in 2012 was not our coverage of the discovery of the Higgs boson or the announcement of the year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. The top spot went instead to David Kramer’s short news story, ‘NASA announces a new Mars mission ,’ which appeared on 22 August in the Politics and Policy department. Apparently, the story owes its popularity to being picked up by Reddit, a social news site. Of course, the story is also a concise and informative summary of a future mission!

Science controversies past and present

Besides the capriciousness of what gets picked by social media or online aggregators, online popularity lists also reveal what people care most about. The second most-viewed item in 2012 was a feature article from October 2011. In ‘Science controversies past and present ,’ Steven Sherwood placed anthropogenic climate change in the same category as Nicolaus Copernicus’s Sun-centric solar system and Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity—that is, as a once-controversial idea that would later become widely accepted.

The possibility that anthropogenic climate change might be empirically vindicated riled some online readers enough to comment extensively on the article and to share it with their skeptical friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. The article continued to attract (mostly hostile) comments for months after it had originally appeared.

Richard Somerville and Susan Hassol’s feature article, ‘Communicating the science of climate change ,’ appeared in the same issue as Sherwood’s and was the third most-viewed article of 2012. The most recent comment was posted last month!

Teaching general relativity to undergraduates

Physics is notoriously difficult to teach—which partly explains why some physics teachers, eager to share their enthusiasm for the subject, develop and seek new, more effective pedagogical methods. The fourth most-viewed item in 2012 tackled one of the most difficult fields within physics: general relativity.

In ‘Teaching general relativity to undergraduates ,’ Nelson Christensen and Thomas Moore recounted teaching event horizons, curved spacetime, and other aspects of general relativity. In the light of those experiences, they recommended basic approaches and individual textbooks. ‘We thank the numerous physics teachers and textbook authors who have helped us acquire information for this article,’ Christensen and Moore wrote in their acknowledgments. Given the popularity of their article, physicists are grateful to them, too!

Textbook electrodynamics may contradict relativity

In fifth place came Steven Corneliussen’s Science and the Media column about a news story in the 27 April issue of Science magazine. The story’s topic was a claim, published in Physical Review Letters, that the classic formula for the Lorentz force is inconsistent with Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Corneliussen is not a physicist, but evidently his journalistic nose for provocative science proved acute.

More climate change

‘You should resign, and if you don’t, I’ll work to see that you are fired’ is one example of the threats that climate scientists have received for claiming, on the basis of their experiments, simulations, and theories, that humanity’s emission of greenhouse gases is warming Earth’s troposphere. Physics Today‘s Toni Feder reported on those threats and the impact they’re having on climate scientists’ lives for February’s Issues and Events department.

Her story was the sixth most-viewed item in 2012. Like the magazine’s other coverage of climate change, it attracted vitriolic comments, including this one, which, while seeking to downplay the story, inadvertently exemplified the hostility that climate scientists face:

Women in physics: A tale of limits

Rachel Ivie and Casey Tesfaye noted at the beginning of their seventh-placed article, ‘Women in physics: A tale of limits ,’ that physics continues to trail other sciences when it comes to the representation of women. Just 17% of physics PhDs in the US are currently awarded to women. Redressing that imbalance is a high priority for the American Physical Society and other physics societies. It’s also evidently of interest to many individual physicists, male and female, who visit Physics Today‘s website.

Rachel and Casey’s article was based on a survey they conducted of women physicists around the world. Despite covering countries of different levels of development, the survey’s message was remarkably consistent: Cultural expectations about housework and children inhibit women’s careers in physics.

Predicting and managing extreme weather events

Yes, another article about climate appears in the 2012 top-10. In eighth place came an article by Jane Lubchenko and Thomas Karl entitled ‘Predicting and managing extreme weather events. ’ Although the authors avoided attributing climate change to humanity’s activities, the article attracted hostile comments from global warming skeptics as if it had.

Nanotechnology in cancer medicine

The penultimate item in the 2012 top 10 is Jennifer Grossman and Scott McNeil’s feature article, ‘Nanotechnology in cancer medicine .’ Grossman and McNeil reviewed a promising new approach to treating cancer: using nanoparticles to target the blood vessels that nourish tumors. The article appeared on the cover of the August issue.

Networks in motion

All of the top nine items of 2012 were freely available to anyone with an internet browser. Not so the tenth most-viewed item of 2012, ‘Networks in motion ,’ a feature article by Adilson Motter and Réka Albert. Only registered users, individual subscribers, or readers at subscribing institutions could read the full text. Evidently, Motter and Albert’s fellow physicists appreciated their accessible review of network theory’s growing list of real-world applications.

A final note: In compiling this list, I was careful to use the term ‘item,’ rather than webpage. By far the two most popular webpages in 2012 were those of the Physics Update and News Picks departments.