A couple of days ago I cleaned the filters in our heat pumps. What prompted me to do this wasn't the cold weather, but the visible build up of dust on the casing of the indoor units. It looked horrible. On opening the unit up, it was clear that the filters were well overdue a […]
Continue readingMonth: May 2015
Lenz’s law – at 3 tesla
When I was at school, and introduced to magnetic fields in a quantitative sense (that is, with a strength attached to it), I remember being told that the S.I. unit of magnetic flux density (B-field) is the tesla, and that 1 tesla is an extremely high B-field indeed. Ha! Not any more. Last Friday night […]
Continue readingSpecial relativity – not so easy to grasp
I’ve just given a couple of lectures on special relativity to a class of first years. It’s clear that grasping the key ideas is going to take some time. The results are so far removed from everyday experience that there is a certain air of bewilderment in the classroom. Here’s an example of what I […]
Continue readingDeveloping assessment literacy
I just love the word 'obfuscate'. It means (in my words) to take something that is perfectly clear, and render it incomprehensible. As in "Using the word 'obfuscate' in a sentence will obfuscate its meaning". I say this because I've just been reading an article on which (clearly) a statistician has been let loose – […]
Continue readingA blatant plug for the NZIP2015 conference
There's no hiding my conflicts of interest here. I'm on the New Zealand Institute of Physics 2015 conference organizing committee. I'm also the NZIP treasurer. And I'm a staff member at the host organization. So, to contribute to the New Zealand physics community's biennial event in Hamilton on 6 – 8 July, click on this […]
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