I've been reviewing some papers for an engineering education conference this week. I can't go into detail about any of them, because I've been given them in confidence to look at, but they have provoked some thoughts about the nature of university. Students come to university, to study physics or engineering or whatever, and what […]
Continue readingYear: 2014
Magnetic fields and USB sticks
Question: What does a rare-earth magnet do to a USB stick? Answer: (Having accidentally carried out this experiment by having both in my desk drawer at the same time): It sticks to it. I was rather relieved to discover that the data on my USB stick seems to be perfectly intact, despite the casing of […]
Continue readingWhy you need a physicist
I was at a conference on 'brain research' last week in sunny Queenstown. There were some great talks, but I was particularly taken by one on the final morning by Jason Kerr, a kiwi now at Max Planck Institute in Germany. He was talking about the vision of rats, and described a very interesting series […]
Continue readingEngineering, lego and line followers
In the last few weeks I've been working with some second-year software engineering students on a design project. Their particular task is to build (with Lego – but the high-tech variety) a robot that can follow a white line on a bench. It's fun to watch them play with different ideas and concepts – there's […]
Continue readingBeing a Nobel Laureate doesn’t mean you can give a lecture
I'm at the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics Congress in Brisbane this week. Besides being a nice escape from the winter, I'm learning a lot – mostly molecular biology. The 'physics' content in some of the talks and posters is rather hard to spot – the 'bio' is rather more evident. I wonder, […]
Continue readingWeather and statistics
I overheard the following conversation at the best coffee outlet on campus yesterday: "Well, winter's nearly over. We're past the shortest day so it's getting warmer. And we've had eleven frosts so far this year, and the record for Hamilton is twelve, so there can only be one more to come." – Anonymous Where do […]
Continue readingSaddle-points and today’s weather
I've been following the weather with interest this week. First of all, I was very glad when the wind and rain disappeared late last weekend. We were at a wedding in Whakatane on Saturday afternoon/evening, and boy, did it rain. With the wedding in a garden in something that was a bit more substantial than […]
Continue readingCheck those approximations
A common technique in physics is 'modelling'. This is about constructing a description of a physical phenomenon in terms of physical principles. Often these can be encapsulated with mathematical equations. For example, it's common to model the suspension system of a car as two masses connected by springs to a much larger mass. Here, the […]
Continue readingGoing down the plughole
Being a father of an active, outdoor-loving two-year-old, I am well acquainted with the bath. Almost every night: fill with suitable volume of warm water, check water temperature, place two-year-old in it, retreat to safe distance. He's not the only thing that ends up wet as he carries out various vigorous experiments with fluid flow. […]
Continue readingThreshold concepts bite back
Long story cut short: I'm currently writing a paper on a piece of work I presented at the (fairly) recent conference on Threshold Concepts, that was hosted here at Waikato. In order to do this, I'm needing to learn a new language, namely that of qualitative research. Qualitative Research is not something that comes naturally […]
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