I went to a very interesting seminar this morning. Phil Race, from the UK, was presenting about making assessments better in tertiary teaching. There was a lot in his talk (you can download it and other information from www.phil-race.co.uk ) – I’ll just summarise some of the points that are most interesting to me. 1. […]
Continue readingYear: 2010
High technology tearoom
I feel it is about time I commented on the high-technology tap that is in our Faculty tearoom. It was put in several months ago during refurbishment. It’s certainly an impressive-looking tap. It has switches for hot and cold water, that you can flip up or down to turn the water on (the only difference […]
Continue readingLithium
Those who saw last night’s report on TV One about the lithium reserves in Bolivia might be forgiven for thinking that this is a magic new energy source that the Bolivian president is sitting on. Describing it as ‘the new oil’ is somewhat misleading. The application at hand is of course lithium ion batteries, which […]
Continue readingPut your trust in a computer…
I’ve mentioned before the way that it is tempting to put your faith in the output of a computer program, particularly if it involves impressive graphics and displays words that you don’t understand. But this phenomenon doesn’t apply just to computers. I’ve been seeing it in my students’ lab work too – where an instrument […]
Continue readingEngine oil and lubrication
We have a couple of cars that are beginning to age, and with that do things like breakdown occasionally and go through oil. That an engine can survive 200 000 km quite happily is to a large extent down to the lubrication. Just a few quick calculations can give the scale of the problem the […]
Continue readingNewton’s third law
In yesterday’s tutorial I had an enlightening discussion with the students about Newton’s third law. Enlightening for me just as much as I hope it was for them. You’ll find the law in textbooks phrased something like "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Sounds simple, and to someone who is well […]
Continue readingMindless Monday
Here’s something that is only tenuously related to physics, but will help you cope with your Monday. Yahoo’s top ten worst cars ever. Those of you who want some physics can evaluate whether the final statement on the description of the Mini Moke (that you were in danger of falling out on roundabouts) is over-exaggeration. http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/23072010/36/top-ten-worst-cars-0.html
Continue readingFluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field
In uncertain times, its good to know there are some things that never change – such as day follows night, my compass needle always points in the same direction, and England will always underperform at the World Cup. Well, scrub the middle one, actually. In our lab, at any rate, there are some shocking variations in […]
Continue readingAaaarrrhh first year
It’s no secret that I don’t like teaching first year classes. I find third year undergraduates far easier to teach. I think the main reason for this is that with the third years I don’t have such a large gap between my knowledge of the subject and theirs. That means that I don’t need to […]
Continue readingInfra-red and heat
Here’s a bit of physics that’s coming up in my lectures – what’s the connection between heat and infra-red? You’ve probably seen imagery from ‘thermal imagers’ or infra-red (IR) cameras, usually on police shows, taken from a helicopter as it follows a suspect fleeing down some alley-way at night. You’ll see that ‘hot’ things (like […]
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