I would say I generally think captialism is a good idea, but after my experience on Tuesday night I am beginning to wonder. Does any of this sound familar? Ten years ago I bought a policy (call it policy 1) with financial organisation A. It was a ten-year one – paying out just a few days […]
Continue readingYear: 2010
Clever lenses
I’ve just bought a new pair of glasses. The prescription is a little different from my old pair, meaning that although everything is slightly sharper the world seems to curve downwards a bit towards my right. That’s just my brain getting used to the new way in which the world is projected onto my retina – […]
Continue readingSeal level rises
I received an email yesterday alerting me to an upcoming news brief on the implications of seal level rise as a result of climate change. A rise in seal level is something that I hadn’t thought of before. I’m not sure whether we are talking about specific species of seal, like the New Zealand fur […]
Continue readingThe academic poster
I was having a conversation this morning about the status of the poster at an academic conference. At most conferences there will be one or more ‘poster sessions’. A ‘poster presentation’ is an alternative to an oral presentation – instead of preparing power point slides to send your audience to sleep, you do the same with […]
Continue readingMeasuring the speed of light
Earthquakes are not the only thing that can cause a building to move. Simple expansion and contraction as a building heats and cools can move walls around. Not so you’d notice with the naked eye, but certainly noticeable if you have mirrors attached to the walls to guide a laser beam around a lab. That’s […]
Continue readingWhy are eggs egg-shaped?
Here’s a nice bit of news that’s come out of Christchurch in the last few days. The kiwi eggs being incubated at Willowbank wildlife reserve survived the earthquake, and one of them has now hatched into an adorable baby bird, who now carries the name ‘Richter’. (N.B. Kiwi aren’t adorable – from what I’ve heard they […]
Continue readingPity the poor PhD student…
I’ve recently been asked to be an examiner for a PhD thesis. This is the first time I’ve been given this honour. It is a slightly disconcerting thought as the success of the last three (or possibly more) years of a student’s life hangs on what I choose to say about his thesis. When I […]
Continue readingEarthquakes and Polarized light
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 readingIrrelevant 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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