If ever you thought reading a physics textbook was like reading a page of Tolkein, this one is for you. (Thanks due to University of Nottingham). Each symbol has a short video behind it.
Continue readingYear: 2009
Risky things
I love the headline at the end of last week ‘Wellington quake risk halves’. As if you can wake up one morning and find that the chances of an earthquake happening today are suddenly half of what they were yesterday just because someone says so. What next – someone decreeing that summer will last 12 […]
Continue readingThe end of the week…
Have you ever had one of those days when you have worked flat out all day and seem to have accomplished nothing? I think that’s today. My desk looks like a tornado has been through the office. Now, I wonder, statsitically speaking, how many tornados I’d need to come through before one picked up all […]
Continue readingScholarship physics questions
I’ve just been putting together a presentation for final year school children on the NZ scholarship physics exam. NZ Scholarship is awarded to the top 3% or so of students in a particular subject in a particular year, and there is some big money up for grabs. But the exam questions for scholarship are hard. Really. […]
Continue readingGeometric algebra
Here’s a lovely quote that students will empathize with: "A recent study on the use of vectors by introductory physics students summarized the conclusions in two words: "vector avoidance". This state of mind tends to propagate through the physics curriculum. In some 25 years of graduate physics teaching, I have noted that perhaps a third […]
Continue readingHubble pictures – better than Milford Sound?
Photo from NASA Have a look at the latest pictures from the upgraded Hubble Space telescope. I particularly like this one. The universe really is a huge place. If we look carefully enough, maybe we’ll even find a solution to the All Black lineout.
Continue readingWhat has log of -1 to do with a blog?
OK, following from my ability to break web-applications (it’s not the first time I’ve done it – a couple of years ago I managed to break one of our staff-only applications on our website – about 30 seconds later I got a call saying "we don’t know what you’ve done but you weren’t supposed to […]
Continue readingPhysicsstop breakage
Well, what do you know? I write an entry about complex numbers and the next thing that happens is my blog editor breaks down and I get an error message "cannot take the log of -1 at lib/MT/Template/ContextHandlers.pm line 2032". Our nice support people have fixed it now, so hopefully I am readable again. For […]
Continue readingComplex numbers
Sometimes the divide between physics and mathematics is a thin one. Particularly between theoretical physics (which is what I do most of) and mathematics. The difference is that physicists have to keep one foot loosely planted in reality. It’s true that sometimes it just the tip of a little toe that’s behind the reality-line, but […]
Continue readingFog
Well, what does one expect living in Waikato? Four days of gorgeous spring weather in a row is a bit much to ask for. So the fog was back this morning, and with it the idiot car drivers who don’t put their lights on. Why? Do they want to die? A white car with no […]
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