I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the value of electromagnetic spectrum real-estate. It proved quite topical – as I wrote it I had no idea that Stephen Joyce was about to release an emphatic "no" to requests from the Maori Council for rights to the 4G spectrum (See e.g. the TVNZ coverage of […]
Continue readingYear: 2010
Why conventional astronomy is rubbish
My father-in-law sent me this link at the weekend. It’s to a book published in 1914 (that’s nineteen fourteen, not sixteen fourteen, or nine fourteen), describing how children of the day are being taught lies with regard to the shape and movement of the earth in the solar system. Does the Earth Rotate? No. By […]
Continue readingIt never works when you need it to
A couple of weeks ago my wife mistook an old glass jug of ours for a pyrex one and poured boiling water in it. The result was quite pretty, with a jigsaw of cracks across the jug rendering it incapable of holding any fluid ever again, boiling or otherwise. That’s thermal expansion for you. Glass […]
Continue readingThe context doesn’t change the laws of physics
No, I didn’t stay up to watch the New Zealand v Slovakia game last night. Based on the grand sample size of one match each, NZ is as good as England. Not sure who that compliments / insults, though for you UK readers (I know there are some), the public reaction here to a 1-1 […]
Continue readingWhat shall I blog about today?
Don’t ask that question. There I was, last night, leaving work, thinking that I had nothing to put on a physics blog, when I turned the key in my car ignition to find an engine that was struggling to give me any power. After going a kilometre or so, it was clear it wasn’t a […]
Continue readingWhat equation do I need?
With A-semester exams looming, the students here at Waikato are becoming a little more focused on their work. That inevitably means that I get more of them coming to me after a lecture, or knocking on the door of my office. And that is good. One of the most common questions I get, usually in […]
Continue readingLots of flashing LEDs
A sure-fire way to increase the value of any piece of electronic equipment is to add some superfluous flashing red, yellow and green LEDs to it. (Light Emitting Diode.) They serve no use, but their presence is somehow comforting (especially in sci-fi films) and gives the impression that the equipment is busy doing something useful. There […]
Continue readingWhere the smart money is…
Mark Twain is reputed to have said on investment choices "Buy land – they’re not making it anymore". There’s got to be a good deal of truth in that – it’s hard to see that there will be a decreasing demand for land on a global scale in the next century (though there are perhaps […]
Continue readingSexy science (or not)
Slightly drifting away from physics this one, but it’s still science, so I shan’t apologise. At this week’s Cafe Scientifique in Hamilton we had a great presentation from Louis Schipper, one of the soil scientists at the university here, on denitrification. What’s that? Well, it’s quite important, so pay attention. Louis gave us an interesting […]
Continue readingQuarks Galore
Here’s a nice example of some particle physics from the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/Images_2010/BsDsMuNu.png (taken from the LHCb news page at http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/ ) The picture shows an unfortunately-named Bs particle (for Beauty Strange), produced as a result of a 7 TeV proton-proton collision. This particle doesn’t live long; it decays into a Ds+ […]
Continue reading