I attended the final of the The3is in Three competition on Wednesday night. It was a really entertaining evening; compere Te Radar was in great form, as were the eight finalists (N.B. I know that those of you who are not from NZ won’t have the slightest idea who Te Radar is, but I’m sure […]
Continue readingMonth: October 2009
Using words is OK
I’m in the thick of marking exam papers. In physics, a lot of what a student does is mathematically based, so a fair bit of any exam is going to contain calculations of things. But don’t think that it is compulsory to make your answer totally incomprehensible. Many of the exam answers I see from […]
Continue readingAnti-gravity
There are some lovely physics demonstrations that get repeatedly wheeled-out for things like Open Day and visits from school groups. Things like holding a spinning bike wheel on a rotating chair (flip it over and you start rotating – conservation of angular momentum) and levitating a piece of superconductor above a magnet at liquid nitrogen […]
Continue readingMagnets attract, right?
Here’s an example of some physics that doesn’t quite seem to work out. Magnets attract iron. Yes? So what happens when you place a drop of ferrofluid (which is basically an oil whose molecules have been laced with iron atoms) on the surface of water and lower a maget towards it. The oil will flow […]
Continue readingNo I don’t have the LHC timetable
If you want to know when not to expect annihilation of the earth following a second-big-bang in the Large Hadron Collider, I’m afraid the best I can offer you is a link to their press site. http://press.web.cern.ch/press/lhc-first-physics/schedule/ They are being very coy about exactly when things will happen.
Continue readingVirtual field trips
If you think it unfair that your children get to go on lots of exciting school trips that you never went on this is for you – virtual field trips throughout New Zealand on the LEARNZ website. Sent to me by NZ Institute of Physics – thanks guys.
Continue readingMonopoles, Dipoles, Quadrupoles and the like
The alternate stretching and squashing casued by a gravitational wave is an example of a quadrupole oscillation. This is another word that probably means very little to most readers, and, unless you like maths, Wikipedia isn’t going to help you, so I’ll explain. Let’s start with a monopole. You get a monopole when you put ‘stuff’ […]
Continue readingGravitational Waves
One of my undergraduate students has been researching gravitational waves this year. Last Friday, he gave a nice presentation on the subject. Gravitational waves are one of the many examples of waves in physics. We are perhaps more used to waves on the surface of water, or waves along a guitar string, or electromagnetic waves […]
Continue readingThe3is in Three
I reckon that every scientist should be able to explain his or her work to any audience, in any situation. Whether it is a 30 second conversation with a six year old with the aid of a pencil and paper, an oral presentation to the general public (a la cafe scientifique), or a detailed effort […]
Continue readingThe physicist joke
So, for those who want it in full, here is the joke I referred to earlier. A geneticist, a physicist, and a statistician are all asked by a gambler to advise him on which horse to place his money in the Melbourne Cup.
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