As any physics student knows (or should know), units are important things. By ‘unit’ I mean a measure of the kind of quantity you are dealing with. So if it’s mass, then a kilogram, a gram, an ounce, etc are all units; if it’s distance, then kilometres, light-years, feet are all units. Units are essential […]
Continue readingYear: 2010
What lightning does to your television
Well, last night’s thunderstorm was a bit of a feeble affair after the fireworks of Wednesday. There were a few flashes, the odd rumble, and a bit of rain, but it cleared away after an hour. Maybe somewhere else got the drenching this time. Still, it makes four days in a row of the same […]
Continue readingWild weather in Waikato
Well, those of you living in the central North Island will probably have some idea already of what I’m going to say, but, for those of you who don’t, I’ll start by saying that the weather here has been rather predictable this week. We’ve had three tropical-style days in a row, with a fourth shaping […]
Continue readingSay goodbye to the drill…
Here’s a nice piece of applied physics research that will excite a significant minority of the population – specifically those who dread going to the dentist. Personally, I have never had any issues with drills (needles are a different story), but I know lots of people who do. The proposed method uses cold plasmas to […]
Continue readingHeads I win, tails you lose
The comment on my previous entry raises a few issues with the way we feel heat. (NB for those who normally read this blog on http://www.sciblogs.co.nz , you’ll need to go onto physicsstop to see the comment – https://sci.waikato.ac.nz/physicsstop ) How hot we feel has more to do than just what the temperature is. Anyone who […]
Continue readingCan you feel the cold?
Writing the last piece about fridges has reminded me about a comment I heard from a fellow student while I was an undergraduate. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but it quite possibly had something to do with objects in liquid nitrogen. Anyway, the comment was something along the lines of ‘The temperature’s so low you […]
Continue readingBBQ Physics
Here’s another little bit of physics seen in everyday stuff. When disconnecting the gas cylinder to our camp stove while on holiday, I got a bit of a shock at how cold it was. It shouldn’t have shocked me – that’s how it should be. When gas is made to expand it cools down. And in […]
Continue readingUseful origami (and wine bottles)
Here’s something silly and not-quite-entirely-useless for a Monday morning. Think of a deformable material (something solid but something you can squeeze, stretch, dent, etc). Maybe a bean bag, lump of plasticine, football etc. It might or might not return to its original position after you let go of it, but that doesn’t matter. Think what […]
Continue readingDark Matter and statistics
While I was on holiday, news broke (e.g. see the piece in The Guardian) about the possible detection of WIMPs. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles are what many physicists think makes up ‘dark matter’. (What is dark matter? – basically, if you analyse the way galaxies move, you discover that the amount of matter you can ‘see’ […]
Continue readingLarge, heavy objects
Our cat got the shock of his life a couple of days ago when the washing machine got up and chased him out of the room. It’s not often that inanimate objects start walking on their own accord. Poor cat is probably so traumatized he’d never set foot in the laundry again except for the […]
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