The3is in Three final

The final of The3is in Three was a couple of weeks ago now – so I thought I’d better mention it before it becomes too out of date.  As was the case last year, it was a great evening of entertainment, compered wonderfully by Te Radar. There were ten stunning three-minute presentations, covering all areas […]

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Aircraft insulation

I read in the NZ Herald this week that one of Air New Zealand’s energy-saving strategies was to make sure an aircraft’s insulation is dry. Apparantly, 200 kg of water can be sucked out of a plane’s insulation.  Sounds impressive. The article appeared to be pushing the weight saving as the main cost saving. Two hundred […]

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Unconventional projectiles

I thought that sometimes I over-analyzed things for their physics content but obviously I have a long way to go… http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/physics-of-angry-birds/ Rhett Alain, a fellow physics-blogger 🙂 discusses his favourite computer game… This reminds me that several years ago I looked at a PhD thesis about the mathematical modelling of deformation – i.e. describing how an object […]

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What’s cooking at the LHC?

I’ve just been perusing CERN’s Twitter site http://www.twitter.com/cern for some of their latest news. While the Higgs is still hiding inside some time-travelling baguette, there’s still some really nice physics arising. This example is one that caught my attention – it’s the detection of a bound state made up of a beauty (or bottom) quark […]

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