Our organic alarm clock has now taken to jumping on the bed at about 5 in the morning and purring very loudly in an attempt to persuade us it’s breakfast time. It’s not surprising, since sunrise (and therefore cat-rise, if not Marcus-rise) is becoming earlier and earlier. Daylight hours are now long – in fact the […]
Continue readingWe’ve had a couple of fire alarms in the last week. Both false alarms, which is good. We still however pile out onto the grass in front of the Faculty of Science and Engineering and time how long it takes for the fire engines to arrive and bet on whether the Hamilton City-based crew will […]
Continue readingLectures have finished; students now are into the exam period; and my thoughts naturally turn to research for the summer. To be more accurate, they first turn to marking the aforementioned exams and other assignments, but research will quickly take over. One of the projects we have going involves recording small electrical signals from a […]
Continue readingOne of the main intentions of our 2nd year Experimental Physics paper at the University of Waikato is to have students learn how to put together a physics experiment that measures something, and to measure that thing in a systematic and robust manner. What that means in practice is dealing with uncertainties. Whereas the average […]
Continue readingEarlier this week, we had the end-of-year display of student engineering projects. There were lots of posters put up to browse around over tea, several interesting large objects such as pieces of electric cars, and many fascinating talks given by the students. One of the most enjoyable talks was given by student Timothy Walmsley, concerning a study on […]
Continue readingOctober is ‘Postgraduate Studies Month’ here at the University of Waikato, and the highlight is ‘The3is in Three’.I talked about it last year – it’s a competition in which PhD students have to explain their research in three minutes using just one powerpoint slide. This year two of my PhD students have done very well. One […]
Continue readingIf you’re like me, you’ve been mesmerized by the colours created by reflections from a DVD or CD. The discs do a great job of splitting the illuminating ‘white’ light of your home light-bulbs into its constituent colours. But unlike a prism or raindrop, which achieve this effect through refraction (blue light travels more slowly […]
Continue readingI had this lovely piece of written feedback in an email from a student yesterday. I … think your emphasis on the physics rather than the math that describes it … is really good, my problem solving approach has changed from wondering what equations I have at my disposal to what’s actually going on. What […]
Continue readingIn physics, just like elsewhere in life, there can be more than one way to tackle a problem. An example I’ve been thinking about recently is in the computer modelling of random processes (which is essentially what my research is about). Rather than talk about neurons and what causes them to fire or not-to-fire, I’ll draw […]
Continue readingLast Saturday I did a morning session with high-school students who are preparing to sit the NZQA scholarship exam in physics later this year. This exam is aimed at the top students in any year group – with an aim of rewarding them and recognizing excellence. The questions are certainly hard – and to do […]
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