First of all, sorry for the lack of entries. That’s what having a baby does. To write blog entries, or to try to extract a smile out of the bubba? Baby wins every time! Anyway, this morning I was going through some teaching appraisal forms. At the end of every paper, the students have the […]
Continue readingYear: 2012
The shortest distance between two points
I remember as a student being presented with the proof that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (at least, on a 2 dimensional flat surface). Although it’s almost blatantly obvious, it can be formally proved through Calculus of Variations. However, the quickest route between two points is not necessarily a straight […]
Continue readingBack to work
It’s been great having time off work with Karen and Benjamin, but, as they say, all good things come to an end. So today it’s back to work, with my first class in about an hour and a half. I spent my final afternoon of parental leave probing the underlying geology of our driveway, trying […]
Continue readingWhat 3am looks like
I shan’t apologise for the lack of entries – other things have been on our mind in recent days. But Benjamin is sleeping just now, which gives a few minutes for some blogging. He’s already been doing a bit of physics – studying the continuity equation. That is, the change in mass equals the mass […]
Continue readingBaby!
A beautiful son, Benjamin John Wilson, arrived on Thursday 28 June, early in the morning. He was a hefty 4.3 kg. He’s still struggling with getting his head around relativistic electrodynamics and quantum many body theory, but, give it a few years, and he’ll get there. Maybe he’ll even sleep for a bit before then!
Continue readingedX: What is the future of universities?
Technology is changing how education is done. Anyone my age (shall we say larger, but not much larger, than 40) who has gone into a school recently will see that it’s vastly different from what they themselves experienced at school. Technology abounds, and the children are using it. Also, university is vastly different from what […]
Continue readingThe fast Fourier transform
I made the brave decision yesterday to attend a seminar in the Computer Science department. I used to like computer science as a teenager – I was one of those geeks who wrote their own computer games – but in latter times I’ve stuck with the physics and used computers begrudgingly as a means of doing my […]
Continue readingWhy you shouldn’t bother buying a thermometer
Well, looks like winter has finally arrived here. There’s not much worse weather-wise than having a clear night with the cloud rolling in just as the sun rises. The clear night lets the temperature drop, as the ground radiates away more energy than it receives from the atmosphere and surrounding objects, and then the clouds […]
Continue readingAnother bad physics joke
Brrrrr. It was so cold this morning I had to wipe the Bose-Einstein condensation off the windows. Perhaps more amusing was the sight I saw on the edge of the road this morning on my way into work. The ‘white-line painting crew’ had clearly been out remarking the road. The white line on the left […]
Continue readingSabbaticals
One of the most interesting talks from last week at the Transit of Venus forum was by Craig Nevill-Manning, the Engineering Director of Google, and, by the way, a graduate of The University of Waikato. He let us in to the ironic secret of Google’s success: Google promotes face-to-face meetings. While its products help us […]
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