D’oh. Missed the exploding meteor last night. From the news reports it sounds like a pretty impressive sight. (N.B. I like the comment on the stuff.co.nz article that says "Faster than a plane = definitely over 10000 km an hour. I don’t know how many planes this guy has travelled in, but doing 10000 km […]
Continue readingOne of the benefits of me undertaking a teaching qualification is that I am now a lot more conscious of the kinds of thought processes my students are using. (The best way to do that is to talk to them). This year I’ve noticed how ‘compartmentalized’ students’ learning appears to be. What I mean by that is that […]
Continue readingHere’s an example of how easy it is to see things that don’t exist. It’s from a real piece of research (mine). As way of background, I’ve been doing some work with computer models of neurons in the cortex (NB this isn’t artificial neural networks, which were all the rage in the 1980/90s). Broadly speaking, I’ve […]
Continue readingHopefully, now that 20 March has passed, people feel a bit more confident in assessing for themselves the abilities of Ken Ring (and others) to predict major earthquakes. No doubt the offenders will try to wriggle out of it by claiming that a M5.1 aftershock in Christchurch was ‘close enough’, but I’m afraid Mr Ring that […]
Continue readingI don’t have any clearer picture than any of you on what is happening in the Japanese nuclear power stations at the moment. I’ve only got the official statements to go on, the same as anyone else. But one thing I can talk about a bit is the nature of radioactive risk and to try […]
Continue readingOn Sunday I went to the Magic – Mystics netball game at Mystery Creek in Hamilton. It was a game that both teams did their very best to lose, in the end the Magic were more dedicated to this cause than the Mystics, and cunningly let them sneak a winning goal in the last few […]
Continue readingLast week I came face to face with another physics misconception with some of my students. I do think that, as I get more experienced teaching, I’m getting better at picking up on where students are having problems. But it’s a very difficult thing to do. Last week it was circular motion The students were looking at a fairly simple problem […]
Continue readingI vaguely remember the following conversation from back when I was a PhD student. Student A: What’s a Bessel function? Student B (waving his arms about): It’s a wavy thing – goes like this, doesn’t it? Me: Sounds vaguely familiar – I think we did it in third-year. Student A: But what IS it? Me: […]
Continue readingThis afternoon I’ve been discussing with a PhD student a question that is really at the heart of the scientific method. He’s measuring something in the lab that is a bit variable. Everytime he takes a reading of Y it is a little bit different. Essentially, he wants to know that if he does X to […]
Continue readingOver the summer a lot of the engineering students here have been out on work placements. At the end of the placement, they write a report on it, which is then assessed. These reports get shared arouhd the staff in order to do this, so I’ve got a few to do, which are beginning to […]
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