While waiting for my aged computer to boot-up on my return to work this morning, I was skimming through November’s Physics World magazine, and noted an obituary to Rudolf Mossbauer. He is best known in the physics world for observing ‘resonance absorption’ of gamma rays, and then developing the technique of Mossbauer spectroscopy. When a […]
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Electricity Show
I’m guessing many of you readers saw the ‘Sunday’ programme last Sunday. (Would be silly if were on another day of the week). Carlos Van Camp, the guy with the lightning show, was pretty impressive. What was refreshing was how the whole piece was presented without mangling the science, which is something that media are […]
Continue readingThe end of cold dark matter?
There have been recent murmurings that Cold Dark Matter (CDM) is in trouble. Dark matter is stuff that is hypothesized to make up a fair chunk (23%-ish) of what is in the universe (as opposed to normal matter – the stuff we ‘see’ and experiment with – which may make up only 5% what’s in […]
Continue readingMomentum conservation
It’s mid-semester break here at Waikato so I have time to breathe and get back to things other than teaching, such as seeing what the PhD students are up to. Yay. But, here’s a comment about what I was talking about last week with the first year students: conservation of momentum. If you look in […]
Continue readingHot air rises
Well, we have now moved into our new house. We moved last Friday, mostly dodging the heavy showers that have been marauding around the country for the last week. We are slowly unpacking – the place is looking a lot tidier now than it did at the weekend, but it will take a while to […]
Continue readingElectricity and heat
There’s an advert that’s well-featured on the television at the moment for a plug-in wall-mounted heater. As part of the advert, the product is described as ‘efficient’. Now, I’m not at all saying that these heaters aren’t a good purchase, but a bit of physics tells me that this statement about efficiency doesn’t really mean very […]
Continue readingTroublesome Turbines
I’ve been reading in theUK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in the last couple of days about the troublesome position the UK’s wind turbines are in. As well as being noisy and (according to some) ugly, there are big problems with managing their power output. Apparently, the average wind turbine is shut down for about 25 days each year […]
Continue readingCarbon dioxide or methane?
Here’s something I learned last night at Cafe Scientifique from one of our chemists, Chris Hendy. Lake Rotorua produces a significant amount of methane. It just bubbles up to the surface from below. We could harvest it, and fuel a small power station; enough to provide energy to a small town. "But Oh No" – […]
Continue readingKinetic and Potential Energy
I read last week an electronics magazine article about developments in electric aircraft. Yes – for real – the aviation industry is not confined to using truck loads of fossil fuel to get from A to B. The article got off to a bad start by using the word ‘electric’ with the phrase ‘reduced greenhouse […]
Continue readingFighting global warming with old technology
Man – the swimming pool was cold today. Just three days with no sunshine is enough to send it back into penguin territory. Anyway, that’s not today’s entry. I’ve just been at a very interesting seminar by Bill Redman-White, a visitor to the university from The University of Southampton and NXP Semiconductors UK. He was […]
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