Tomorrow I’m going to Te Aroha to give a talk to their continuing education group on the Large Hadron Collider. This is something I foolishly agreed to do many months ago (maybe it was even last year) before I realized how much lecturing I had this semester. Still, I’ve given the talk a few times […]
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The Faraday Suit
Annette Taylor has sent me this link. Rather than turning off a high-voltage power line when you work on it, you just wear one of these special anti-electricity suits. Of course, there’s nothing hi-tech about them (at least, not conceptually). If you put one of these on, you are in your personal Faraday Cage, and […]
Continue readingThe science logbook
In order to help my attempt at doing a ‘reflective journal’ as part of my Postgraduate Diploma of Tertiary Teaching, I’ve had a read of an article by Simon Borg: "The research journal: a tool for promoting and understanding researcher development", Language Teaching Research 5(2), 156-177 (2001). I was given it as an example of […]
Continue readingI hate statistics
A week or so back I walked into the lecture room to give a lecture on electromagnetic waves, and was promptly asked: "Marcus, how much statistics do you use in your research?" My initial reaction was to think "what has this got to do with electromagnetic waves?" and then, realizing that clearly it had nothing […]
Continue readingHow many samples do I take?
This afternoon I’ve been discussing with a PhD student a question that is really at the heart of the scientific method. He’s measuring something in the lab that is a bit variable. Everytime he takes a reading of Y it is a little bit different. Essentially, he wants to know that if he does X to […]
Continue readingMeasurement beats guesswork
OK – so this story is a touch light on the physics front, but it does demonstrate the power of actually taking the time to measure something, instead of assuming the obvious. My wife has kindly agreed to help a friend (who has limited mobility) travel from Cambridge to Hamilton for a medical appointment. This […]
Continue readingElectricity from water – the exciting way
Forget conventional hydroelectric installations – if you want to have fun generating electricity in the lab then the completely static tin can and bucket generator is for you. They are all the rage at the moment – at least in our lab here, where we’ve sidetracked a student from his summer project into making one […]
Continue readingSome data from ATLAS at the LHC
No, the Large Hadron Collider hasn’t vanished. It might not be so prominent in the news as it was two years ago, but it is quietly colliding protons together and generating lots of useful data for analysis. Here’s a couple of bits which I gleaned in Melbourne 1. What lies inside a quark (if anything?). […]
Continue readingExperimenting
One of my talks last week concerned a piece of work I’d done with my second year experimental physics class this year. Before going to Melbourne, I gave the talk a trial run at the University of Waikato’s ‘celebrating teaching’ day. It provoked a few comments then, and a few more in Melbourne, so I […]
Continue readingEarth currents
Five hundred and seventeen for one. That’s more like it. Looking forward to more of the same in Adelaide. So, physics. Last week I was doing a bit of work in the lab with a student, trying to track down why his instrumentation wasn’t working. We’re still at it; what he’s trying to do is quite […]
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