In our first-year physics lab we have the following horticultural experiment. Here we have some bulbs growing on a rotating turntable. The array of five pots is placed on the turntable so that the centre pot is at the centre of the turntable; the left- and right-hand pots are at the perimeter.The turntable is rotating […]
Continue readingYear: 2015
If gravity increased…
A colleague remarked to me yesterday, as we were trudging up the two flights of stairs from the tea-room to the third floor, "I'm sure they turn up the force of gravity in this building each year." I feel like that too, sometimes. However, I suspect it has more to do with the aging process […]
Continue readingClothes racks are the cause of mouldy homes. I doubt it.
I read the 'Rental Nightmare' article on stuff.co.nz last night. Some of the stories are horrific indeed, and I'm reasonably confident that the writer has deliberately sought out the worst situations rather than the most common situations. But one cannot deny that a great deal of housing in New Zealand is sub-standard. In housing-deficient Auckland, […]
Continue readingAxis labels – accurate but not at all obvious
I had a conversation with a class this morning regarding the labelling of axes on graphs.In particular, how we should indicate the units. Most quantities we deal with in physics carry units. A speed might be 35 km/h, a distance might be 16.8 mm, a pressure could be 28 kPa. Saying that a speed is […]
Continue readingA small maths lesson for our prime minister
This isn't physics but I do feel strongly about it. John Key today is reported by the New Zealand Herald today as saying, with regard to the refugee crisis: : It's a global problem. I accept everyone needs to take their fair share of responsibility but actually as a government we have been doing quite […]
Continue readingHow to get entry into a physics degree (but not necessarily physics)
So, I'm now back from a lovely holiday in the UK, following a not-so-lovely period of being sick. Quite possibly I can also get back to blogging. Among the great many emails awaiting for me yesterday were a few about school physics and university physics. They were coming from different sources for different reasons, but […]
Continue readingPluto as you’ve not seen it before
Most of us have never seen Pluto. Most of us never will. Neptune is more plausible.I remember as a student looking for Neptune with the Northumberland Telescope in Cambridge. We were doing a 'planets' night – in which it was theoretically possible to tick off all the planets (save Pluto, which was still a planet […]
Continue readingCalculating pi with darts
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 readingA 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 […]
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