I love this one. Really, it's maths not physics, but there is a bit of experimental physics creeping in at the fringes when the experimenters realize that the first method is biased. The second method is much better designed. Regrettably, pi-day (March 14th, 2015, or 3.14.15) only works if you use the US system of […]
Continue readingMonth: July 2015
A light puzzle
Here's a puzzling photograph that Hans Bachor showed me at the end of the NZ Institute of Physics conference last week. It comes from his public lecture on lasers a week ago. And we don't have the answer to it, so maybe you can enlighten us (pun intended). The photo is of a demonstration of […]
Continue readingNZIP2015 Highlights
So the NZ Institute of Physics conference is in full swing. I have a bit of a break between the end of the last session and tonight's conference dinner, so there's time to give some highlights so far. Well, first, the low-light: Like the rest of my family and half of Hamilton I've had a […]
Continue readingHigh-tech, Low-tech, planetary observations.
First the low-tech: The conjunction of Venus (the brighter one) and Jupiter as recorded by my very lousy cellphone camera just after sunset yesterday. Now the high-tech: A day before that Pluto occulted a star. It moved in front of the star, rather like an eclipse. The significance of the event was that it allowed […]
Continue reading