Here’s some interesting stuff courtesy of the mighty google on yesterday’s post. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=nwrcrepellants It’s an old (1997) report on ‘electronic’ pest control devices. On ‘electromagnetic’ devices, it comments "Laboratory efficacy tests on the control of Norway rats … indicated definitively that such devices have no effect on feeding, drinking, mating or infestation patterns." Hmmm. […]
Continue readingTag: experiment
Electrical Noise
Lectures have finished; students now are into the exam period; and my thoughts naturally turn to research for the summer. To be more accurate, they first turn to marking the aforementioned exams and other assignments, but research will quickly take over. One of the projects we have going involves recording small electrical signals from a […]
Continue readingPendulum mayhem
One of the main intentions of our 2nd year Experimental Physics paper at the University of Waikato is to have students learn how to put together a physics experiment that measures something, and to measure that thing in a systematic and robust manner. What that means in practice is dealing with uncertainties. Whereas the average […]
Continue readingHow fictional is fiction?
Having watched The Prestige on Sunday night I feel that there should be lots of bloggable material in it, but I can’t quite put my finger on anything. For those who haven’t seen it, or read the book, it concerns a couple of rival magicians who are obsessed with out-doing each other and pulling off […]
Continue readingDimensional analysis
In my experimental physics class, I’ve been doing a bit of work with the students on dimensions and dimensional analysis. Most people who’ve done some physics have some intuition about it, but dimensional analysis puts it on a formal, and often useful footing. Here’s a brief potted summary for those who don’t want to try […]
Continue readingMeasuring the speed of light
Earthquakes are not the only thing that can cause a building to move. Simple expansion and contraction as a building heats and cools can move walls around. Not so you’d notice with the naked eye, but certainly noticeable if you have mirrors attached to the walls to guide a laser beam around a lab. That’s […]
Continue readingWhy are eggs egg-shaped?
Here’s a nice bit of news that’s come out of Christchurch in the last few days. The kiwi eggs being incubated at Willowbank wildlife reserve survived the earthquake, and one of them has now hatched into an adorable baby bird, who now carries the name ‘Richter’. (N.B. Kiwi aren’t adorable – from what I’ve heard they […]
Continue readingGood science speaks for itself
I was at the NIWA science fair at the Hamilton Gardens yesterday morning, talking to some of the children who had put together displays on their science projects. I can’t say anything specific, not least because the prizes haven’t been anounced yet, but I will say that, as ever, it is a real privelege to […]
Continue readingComputer models
For the last couple of days, I’ve been engaged with a student of mine on a computer-modelling problem. Specifically, it’s an electromagnetic problem, working out how the electric field behaves between an array of electrodes. It’s a useful thing to do, because the outputs of the model will help guide future experimental work, and help […]
Continue readingSome thoughts on assessment
I went to a very interesting seminar this morning. Phil Race, from the UK, was presenting about making assessments better in tertiary teaching. There was a lot in his talk (you can download it and other information from www.phil-race.co.uk ) – I’ll just summarise some of the points that are most interesting to me. 1. […]
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