There is new wallpaper going up in our house. Since my DIY skills are marginally better than my cat’s, we’ve employed a decorator to do it. (I fixed a dripping tap once – that was the high point of my DIY activity.) Looking at the new wallpaper has reminded me that I studied it in my […]
Continue readingTag: atoms
What’s cooking at the LHC?
I’ve just been perusing CERN’s Twitter site http://www.twitter.com/cern for some of their latest news. While the Higgs is still hiding inside some time-travelling baguette, there’s still some really nice physics arising. This example is one that caught my attention – it’s the detection of a bound state made up of a beauty (or bottom) quark […]
Continue readingSound proofing by closing a door
We’ve had a couple of fire alarms in the last week. Both false alarms, which is good. We still however pile out onto the grass in front of the Faculty of Science and Engineering and time how long it takes for the fire engines to arrive and bet on whether the Hamilton City-based crew will […]
Continue readingDealing with random things
In physics, just like elsewhere in life, there can be more than one way to tackle a problem. An example I’ve been thinking about recently is in the computer modelling of random processes (which is essentially what my research is about). Rather than talk about neurons and what causes them to fire or not-to-fire, I’ll draw […]
Continue readingLithium
Those who saw last night’s report on TV One about the lithium reserves in Bolivia might be forgiven for thinking that this is a magic new energy source that the Bolivian president is sitting on. Describing it as ‘the new oil’ is somewhat misleading. The application at hand is of course lithium ion batteries, which […]
Continue readingEngine oil and lubrication
We have a couple of cars that are beginning to age, and with that do things like breakdown occasionally and go through oil. That an engine can survive 200 000 km quite happily is to a large extent down to the lubrication. Just a few quick calculations can give the scale of the problem the […]
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