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 […]

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Are 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 […]

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A 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 […]

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Quantum 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 […]

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Don’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 […]

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Getting 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 […]

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Neurons 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 […]

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Keeping 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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