I had to get up early last Saturday to catch my flight back home from Dunedin to Hamilton, via Christchurch. My fears of sleeping through the alarm clock proved irrelevant as I was supplied with a rather more violent variety courtesy of plate tectonics underneath Christchurch. (Dunedin is a long way from Christchurch – given […]
Continue readingMonth: September 2010
Irrelevant physics
Here’s a question taken from a well-used first-year undergraduate physics text: Suppose you are standing on the center of a merry-go-round that is at rest. You are holding a spinning bicycle wheel over your head so that its rotation axis is pointing upward. The wheel is rotating counterclockwise when observed from above. Suppose you now […]
Continue readingConferencing
I’ve just finished a conference – in beautiful Wanaka. At least, they tell me that it’s beautiful, though it was hard to see through all the low cloud, drizzle, and general murk. The weather did at least clear on the morning of our departure. As usual for a conference, there was a vast array of […]
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