The3is in three final

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 reading

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 reading

Anti-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 reading

Magnets 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 reading

Gravitational 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 reading

The3is 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 reading