For Dan Brown fans. Don’t worry, no-one is likely to blow up the world with antimatter.
Continue readingMonth: July 2009
Coffee cup physics
I’ve noticed that when I get a cup of coffee out of our machine, and walk with it back to my office, the small amount of froth on it can start forming patterns. A stripy one is quite common – I get alternate stripes of froth and no froth – maybe about six stripes in […]
Continue readingNo more energy saving lightbulbs…
Last week I received my (dare I say annual?) invitation to be a judge at the Waikato Science Fair. This is a great event where school children get to show off some of the science projects they have been working on. It fills the pavilion at Hamilton Gardens and is a great exhibition to look […]
Continue readingRead the question!!!!
I came back to work last week from Germany to find, as expected, a pile of exam papers to mark. This is par for the course for a university lecturer. Also par for the course, regrettably, is seeing the same mistakes made time and again from students. And the biggest and simplest mistake of them all […]
Continue readingBiology and the second law of thermodynamics
At my recent conference, one of the speakers (Karl Friston) began by remarking on the curious relationship between biological systems and the second law of thermodynamics. What is curious about it, is that there doesn’t appear to be one. As any physicist knows, the second law of thermodynamics is inescapable – things break, electronic equipment […]
Continue readingToothpaste tubes are important
While I was in Dresden, in Germany, I read a leaflet given out by the Dresden tourist office. Most of it was understandably focused towards the main tourist sites of Dresden, but they included a nice little bit describing Dresden industry. The area is of course famous for its porcelain (the first produced in Europe […]
Continue readingPhysicsStop is 100
Yes – PhysicsStop is now 100 – that is, this is the one hundreth entry. For those of you wishing to indulge in nostalgia, view the first entry here. Hopefully I’ve convinced you a that physics can be (at times) a little bit interesting. I’ve written some serious stuff, some light-hearted stuff, some short entries, […]
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