As part of one of our research projects, one of my students has just acquired a set of tiny electrodes, set into plastic in a grid-like pattern. We’ll use this array to measure the electrical conductivity of various fluids. We don’t need 60 electrodes, about 4 would do nicely, but the particular company concerned makes the electrode arrays like […]
Continue readingMonth: April 2010
Making sense of those numbers
A couple of weeks ago I had a cholesterol test. (That involves taking a blood sample, and I was relieved that this time I didn’t faint.) I collected my results from the doctor’s surgery earlier this week. The nurse handed me a piece of paper, with lots of numbers on, and provided me the reassuring comment […]
Continue readingA quarter of a thousand
According to Movable Type, this is entry number 250 for PhysicsStop. A quarter of the way to one thousand entries. Has anyone read them all? Now, according to the statistics I get to see every month, the single most looked at entry by far is this one, on The3is in Three. Why is it so […]
Continue readingAnother exponential decay example
In the last couple of weeks, my wife has been having a go at making sourdough bread. One of the defining characteristics of this bread is that it doesn’t use yeast – at least, not directly. The idea is, to start it off rising, you leave it outside for a while, and allow lots of […]
Continue readingCan you believe this guy?
I stumbled upon this snippet on Yahoo this morning. "Professor proves Germany will win World Cup". Of course the reference is to the only World Cup that matters, the one in South Africa later this year, not the pretend one happening here in NZ next year. I can only think that something has been lost […]
Continue readingSome cardboard pictures
Following a request for some pics…
Continue readingCardboard City
Last weekend saw the ‘Cardboard City’ event at church. Basically, it’s a fun weekend for children. The main event is the construction of ‘houses’ from bits of cardboard, sticky tape and string, in the church hall. Then the children get to sleep in their box houses overnight (supervised by foolhardy and sleep-deprived volunteers like myself). […]
Continue readingNo such thing as a free lunch?
One of the things I’ve been looking at this week is working out some travel details for a conference I’ll be going to in Wanaka in August. Kiwis will immediately be suspicious – the word that forms a natural triplet with ‘Wanaka’ and ‘August’ is ‘skiing’. And furthermore the sessions are early morning and late afternoon and […]
Continue readingPhysics is everywhere
One of the problems with being a physicist is that I start seeing physics happening everywhere I look. Here’s an example. Last week I was sitting in a cafe on Dunedin’s George Street enjoying a coffee with my wife, when the moment was utterly ruined by a completely inconsiderate couple on the other side of the […]
Continue readingCollisions at the LHC
While I’ve been away the Large Hadron Collider has been busy smashing protons together, and is now beginning to acquire some data that will be making some PhD students very happy. This is one of the images that has been released by CERN: (see http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1255405) It shows a collision in the ATLAS detector (the largest […]
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