First things first. PhysicsStop is back on-line after an enjoyable two-week break in warm and sunny southern England. Second things second. What advice can anyone give to the parents of a fourteen-month-old with jetlag who insists that 4 am is time to get up, have breakfast, and feed the chickens (or the "Choo Chuk" as […]
Continue readingYear: 2013
Torsional pendulums and earthquakes
The shaking here in Hamilton is hardly on the scale of Seddon and Wellington, but it does mean my students aren’t going to get anything meaningful out of their measurement of the gravitational constant this afternoon. The Cavendish experiment uses a sensitive torsional pendulum, whose motion is currently more dominated by ground movement than by […]
Continue readingVersion control
I’ve commented before that there are a lot of skills that our science graduates need to have, that don’t get explicitly taught at university. That’s because they don’t neatly fit into compartmentalized degree courses where the structure is dictated by technical knowledge. So things such as how to give a half-decent presentation, how to keep […]
Continue readingHotspot and Silicone Tape
Well, today’s big story is just perfect for PhysicsStop. Cricket meets physics. What more could I ask for. In case you’ve just arrived from Alpha Centauri, there have been accusations flying that both English and Australian batsmen have been trying to defeat the ‘Hot Spot‘ detector by putting silicone tape on their bats. The allegations […]
Continue readingGravity goes downwards
Yesterday afternoon I was engaged in a spot of DIY – putting up some shelves. Even for me, as someone who takes to DIY like a duck to mountaineering, it’s a fairly simple task, and I’m pleased to say that I got there without the ‘do’ in DIY turning into ‘destroy’. With the help of […]
Continue readingAll classes are different
I’m sure many people have had a conversation with a school-teacher friend that goes along these lines: You: "How are you today" Teacher: "Uh. I’m in a bad mood. I’ve just had class 8C. Why do they have to be so difficult?" You: "Is that just normal of year eights?" Teacher: "No. Last year’s lot […]
Continue readingMy equipment doesn’t work…
We’re three weeks into our ‘B’ semester here. One of the papers I’m teaching (just on the fringes of) is our main first year physics paper. When I say ‘on the fringes of’, it means I’m supervising one laboratory session a week. It’s good to keep in contact with what’s going on at first year […]
Continue readingThe ‘Australian’ Earthquake
Hopefully people of Seddon (both Seddon, Marlborough and Seddon, Melbourne) are able to enjoy this piece. What a fantastic example of low quality journalism. The correction is itself pretty lousy, with ‘facts’ being taken second-hand from other websites, including the grandaddy of them all, Wikipedia. http://guardianlv.com/2013/07/severe-earthquake-strikes-australia/
Continue readingWhat’s in a colour?
When I was young (about six-ish) I had a variety of ambitions. Some of them I shared with a lot of other boys of my age, such as being a train driver and playing cricket for England. Some were more particular to me, such as becoming a biologist and discovering a new colour. Needless to […]
Continue readingA stonking good start to our experimental physics paper. Not.
Just a couple of hours ago, I was thinking that I really need to do another blog entry for the week, but (a) can’t think what to do it on and (b) don’t have time to do it because I have a lab class for the afternoon. Well, the events in the lab class have […]
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