This story from Yahoo is hilarious – about a policeman who chased himself for 20 minutes. In a nutshell, a CCTV operator sees a man acting suspiciously, unaware that it is in fact a plain clothes policeman. He radios through to the police, who pass the message on to their nearest policeman to the scene, who is, of […]
Continue readingYear: 2012
Free fall
A couple of weeks ago I found this brief article in the newspaper about Vesna Vulovic, who perhaps holds the record for the longest non-fatal fall – a staggering 10 km after a midair explosion on a plane in 1972. I say ‘perhaps’ because the circumstances of the fall are disputed – it is possible […]
Continue readingAre you a realist or a relativist?
A colleague of mine in the Faculty of Education here at Waikato has drawn my attention to an elegantly titled paper by Andreas Quale: "On the Role of Mathematics in Physics" Science and Education (2011), 20:359-372, for those of you who like references. The paper is about the way mathematics relates to physics, highlighting the […]
Continue readingA physicist’s lament
Yesterday I visited Auckland to interview a few people who work with physics in their industry-based jobs. This was part of my small research project on the role of maths within physics, which I’ve talked about earlier. One of the people I interviewed gave some really fascinating responses, perhaps in part because he had grown […]
Continue readingQuantum Chicken
Our neighbours have a dog – one of those small, yappy, pointless pooches with an excessive bark-to-weight ratio. It runs about their garden, keeping our cat out and gets very loud when I venture over to the compost bin. The neighbours’ garden is fortunately well-fenced, meaning the creature thankfully can’t invade our side. So, imagine […]
Continue readingPotential energy and climbing upwards
At the end of last week, seeing a good(ish) weather forecast, we had a short break away in Wellington, taking the train both directions. Despite the lovely weather (Wellington isn’t ALWAYS blowing a gale) we didn’t get to see the volcanoes en-route, in either direction – they were shrouded in cloud as is often the […]
Continue readingDon’t try this one at home
I did an experiment last night on measuring the elastic constraint forces on light rigid bodies under extreme displacements. Or, in English, I tripped in the garden and stretched various ligaments in my right foot in ways in which they aren’t supposed to be stretched. Ouch. I couldn’t put any weight on the foot at all […]
Continue readingGetting the facts straight
On Saturday night my wife and I went down to Te Awamutu to watch ‘Sherlock Holmes’ – there being no cinema in Cambridge 🙁 It was a moderately naff piece of film – more James Bond than Sherlock Holmes – though quite suitable for some mindless Saturday night entertainment so long as you were prepared […]
Continue readingNeurons or chickens?
Last weekend we had an expedition out to rural Waikato somewhere beyond Morrinsville (in torrential rain of course) to a chicken farm and bought a couple of young chickens. The idea is that they’ll give us an egg supply, and, if properly controlled (ha ha!) dig up the weeds, fertilize the garden etc. (Or, more […]
Continue readingKeeping it cold
One of our recent Christmas gifts was an ice-cream maker. It’s been very welcome, what with all those long hot sunny days we haven’t had. Making ice-cream is pretty straightforward. Just bung in the ingredients and stir the mixture while having it freeze. That’s what the machine does. Stirring makes sure large ice crystals don’t […]
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