In the last few years I've been experimenting with the way I test our 3rd year mechanical engineering students in their 'Dynamics and Mechanisms' paper. I've chosen this paper because (a) it has more than a handful of students, and (b) I am in charge of it. When I've suggested to my peers that I […]
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A lot of huffing and puffing
While there is some great fiction out there, one really shouldn't try to learn much physics from it. One case in point, which I am forced to listen to over and over by the youngest member of our house, is the story of the Three Little Pigs. I'm not talking here about the relative merits […]
Continue readingHow high is a winning cricket score?
I can't help thinking that the West Indies team got their run chase strategy wrong on Sunday night. They had a tricky task ahead of them. One might say the problem was one of their own making, judging from the rubbish that they served up to Guptill to hit at the end of tne New […]
Continue readingThe difference between a theoretical physicist and a mathematician is…
A mathematician can say what he likes… A physicist has to be at least partly sane J. Willard Gibbs What is it that makes a physicist sane (if only in part)? Everything has to be related back to the 'real world', or the 'real universe'. That is, a physicist has to talk about how things […]
Continue readingWhy does time go forwards?
Further to my last post, here's a very accessible discussion on some of the physics related to 'the arrow of time'. Maybe, just maybe, Benjamin has the right idea after all… http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150309-why-does-time-only-run-forwards
Continue readingThe arrow of time
Benjamin is now two-and-two-thirds, or near enough. As ever, his grasp of physics continues to improve. In the last few weeks, he has been picking up the idea of time. We have a large (more accurately, LARGE) analogue clock on the wall of our lounge. He's watched me take it off the wall, change the […]
Continue readingHow do you teach creativity in physics?
In the last couple of weeks, I've been using Hermite Polynomials in my work. I won't go into what they are (look them up here if you like) suffice to say that they are one of many contributions to mathematics from Charles Hermite (1822-1901), who was himself one of many french mathematicians whose work has […]
Continue readingToddler does physics-art
As we all know, a scientifically-minded toddler plus a piece of technology can lead to unexpected results. This is the result of Benjamin playing with a retractable steel tape measure at the weekend. How we came to break the case apart I don't know, but the results are pretty (the cellphone shot in poor light […]
Continue readingRobot racing
The Engineering Design Show is currently in full swing here, with the competitions for the various design projects. The white-line followers kicked off proceedings. They were pretty impressive, with all but one team successfully being able to follow the (very squiggly) line without mistakes. There were traps to confuse the robots – the line got […]
Continue readingThermodynamics of learning
Last week I attended a conference on Emergent Learning and Threshold Concepts, here at the University of Waikato. It was a very interesting couple of days. As far as academic conferences go, it was unusual in that it was really cross-disciplinary. We had engineers mixing with physiotherapists, and management consultants with dancers. It certainly was […]
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