What we’re about
Profs and Pints brings professors and other college instructors into bars, cafes, and other venues to give fascinating talks or to conduct instructive workshops. They cover a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, popular culture, horticulture, literature, creative writing, and personal finance. Anyone interested in learning and in meeting people with similar interests should join. Lectures are structured to allow at least a half hour for questions and an additional hour for audience members to meet each other. Admission to Profs and Pints events requires the purchase of tickets, either in advance (through the link provided in event descriptions) or at the door to the venue. Many events sell out in advance.
Although Profs and Pints has a social mission--expanding access to higher learning while offering college instructors a new income source--it is NOT a 501c3. It was established as a for-profit company in hopes that, by developing a profitable business model, it would be able to spread to other communities much more quickly than a nonprofit dependent on philanthropic support. That said, it is welcoming partners and collaborators as it seeks to build up audiences and spread to new cities. For more information email profsandpints@hotmail.com.
Thank you for your interest in Profs and Pints.
Regards,
Peter Schmidt, Founder, Profs and Pints
Upcoming events (2)
See all- Profs & Pints Charlottesville: The Physics of BaseballGraduate Charlottesville, Charlottesville, VA
Profs and Pints Charlottesville presents: “The Physics of Baseball,” with Scott Paulson, professor of physics and interdisciplinary liberal studies at James Madison University.
[Tickets must be purchased online, with sales tax and processing fees added. Advance tickets: $13.50. Door: $17, or $15 w/ student ID. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/curveball .]
Profs and Pints is offering Charlottesville-area baseball fans an even bigger treat than Cracker Jack, an exploration of the physics underlying their beloved sport.
Professor Scott Paulson, who regularly teaches introductory physics classes that make the physics behind real-world phenomena accessible to all, will discuss the forces and phenomena that come into play in baseball during pitching, batting, and fielding. He’ll toss you basic physics concepts that help explain how baseball’s routine plays got that way, and he’ll explain what’s going on in some situations where the laws of physics seem to be violated by what’s happening on the field.
Ever wondered why curveballs curve or knuckleballs behave so strangely? You’ll learn how Newton’s laws and the Magnus force explain how pitchers get drastically different results from subtle differences in their releases.
Curious about what exactly the “sweet spot” of the bat is? Ever wondered how big an advantage batters get from the thin air of Mile High Stadium? We’ll explore the physics of the batted ball, examining the phenomena of waves and analyzing the interaction of ball, bat and batter with the help of high-speed video.
During one of the more exciting scenarios in a baseball game—the close play at the plate—fans often see outfielders throw to an infielder rather than directly to home. We’ll look at the pros and cons of this relay play, known as a “cut-off,” in the context of the physics of projectile motion.
Finally, we will also look into high-profile cheating scandals involving corked bats and doctored balls. Dr. Paulson will present models to explain how these alterations to the equipment can benefit the batter and pitcher respectively, and he’ll discuss how much these models are backed up by data.
These few hours in a brewpub will forever enhance your enjoyment of time at the ballpark. (Doors open to talk attendees at 4:30 pm and the talk itself starts at 6 pm.)
Image: Photo by Tage Olsin / Wikimedia Commons
- Profs & Pints Charlottesville: New Views of the UniverseGraduate Charlottesville, Charlottesville, VA
Profs and Pints Charlottesville presents: “New Views of the Universe,” a look at the previously unseen realms and phenomena revealed by space telescopes, with Jack Singal, associate professor of physics at the University of Richmond and former researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Stanford University.
[All tickets must be purchased online with sales tax and processing fees added. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/charlottesville-universe .]
The images being produced by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have reignited interest in the frontiers of astronomy. But its voyage is just the latest in a series of remarkable space telescope missions, dating back almost to the dawn of the space age, that have revolutionized our understanding of the universe and what happens in it.
Come to the Graduate by Hilton Charlottesville for a look at how telescopes that see forms of light invisible to our eyes are showing us distant galaxies and amazing phenomena that we never knew existed before, and even letting us see things as they were far back in time.
Your guide on this journey, Dr. Jack Singal, is an astrophysicist whose career has involved studying the universe in all different kinds of light, including radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays.
Professor Singal will discuss the history of space telescope missions and how these instruments’ ability to detect different forms of light has yielded revelations that changed our views of the universe and our place in it. If you’ve ever wondered how we know, for example, that the universe is full of mysterious dark matter, or how we can see what things were like 14 billion years ago, then this talk will provide some answers.
You’ll walk out after the talk and look up at the night sky with a bigger sense of wonder. (Advance tickets: $13.50. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open to talk attendees at 4:30 pm and the talk itself starts at 6 pm.)
Image: “Pillars of Creation,” an infrared image of a star-forming region captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Photo by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI / Creative Commons.)
