First, sorry for the lack of activity. Simply put, there’s been a lot going on. I’ve taken on the role of treasurer for the NZ Institute of Physics which has eaten up rather more time than I hoped for. I’ll get into the swing of things soon though. In that role, here is a shameless […]
Continue readingYear: 2013
Dishwasher dynamics
How long does it take you to load the dishwasher? Placing all those tricky-shaped objects in position to maintain the perfect balance between getting the maximum numbers of objects into the machine and placing them so that they clean optimally. Most likely, less time than it takes to load ours. This isn’t because it’s a […]
Continue readingWoolly writing is a symptom of woolly thinking
People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. David Ogilvy. There’s nothing like reading through and marking students’ exam scripts. Mostly it is terribly boring, but sometimes it is enlightening. One of the questions I asked on an exam this semester involved getting the students to […]
Continue readingQuantum mechanics: Reality is back
With an exam imminent, I’ve had a queue of students outside my door wanting help with their quantum mechanics. This semester, they’ve come across the Schrodinger equation and the wavefunction for the first time and, unsurprisingly, some are struggling to grasp it. "But what IS the wavefunction?", they say. "How do you derive the Schrodinger […]
Continue readingAn aliasing example
Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the Measurement Standards Lab at Lower Hutt. We were talking about making measurements of electrical impedance. In practice, if you want a decent measurement, it’s rather less straightforward than whacking on a multimeter. It was interesting to have a look at their labs, including several New Zealand ‘standard’ […]
Continue readingThe causes of tidal waves (yeah, right)
Pseudoscience – the packaging of absolute gibberish in clever sounding scientific terms – is nothing new. Here’s an example my father-in-law has sent me, from the West Coast Times of 27 October 1869: Tidal Waves and their Causes. It’s a newspaper report of a lecture given in Melbourne on the causes of tsunami. I get […]
Continue readingDon’t cook the baby
Last week we had a new oven installed. Our old el-cheapo one that came with the house was never in Karen’s good books. Small, dirty, incapable of getting to a high temperature and generally giving the impression that it was about to die at any moment. Indeed, it did a couple of Christmases ago – […]
Continue readingThe ticker-tape car
Somewhere in the Cambridge / Hamilton vicinity is a car with no oil in it. I know this because on the way in to work this morning there was a trail of oil on the road. The damp road surface led to it being very prominent. A splash of oil, being less dense than water, […]
Continue readingUnits – they just don’t go away
One thing that’s become really clear to me in teaching physics is that dimensions and units are not straightforward concepts for students. I might hazard the assertion that they are ‘threshold concepts‘ – ones where grasping what they are about transforms you way of thinking. Most people at least half-understand the idea of units – […]
Continue readingWhat does electricity cost?
I was at a local intermediate school this morning, talking to a group of students about energy. It’s a pretty broad topic, and they were very enthusiastic, meaning I only got through about half of what I wanted, but that’s OK. If it inspires them to go and find things out for themselves, then that’s […]
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