The latest kitchen acquisition (no, we don’t spend all our money on buying things for the kitchen) is decent frying pan. We’ve spent too long with frying pans that are about as flat as the Southern Alps. It’s a copper-based pan, which probably accounts for its expense, with a stainless steel surface. The reason for the […]
Continue readingTag: heat
Fallstreak cloud
Those of you who check out the NZ metservice website frequently, may remember last week’s ‘photo-of-the-week’: It’s of fallstreak cloud, and this example was spotted by my mother-in-law, Barbara Seccombe, off the coast from New Plymouth recently. (Photo credit to my father-in-law, Wally Seccombe, used with permission). It’s not something you see everyday, so I asked my brother […]
Continue readingHeat transfer within edible objects
The veggie-juicer in our kitchen will happily take fruit, such as apples and oranges. Apparently, in the case of the orange, it works best if the fruit is cold (but not frozen) throughout. So here’s the question my wife asked me last week: If I have an orange at room temperature, and want to cool it […]
Continue readingHeads I win, tails you lose
The comment on my previous entry raises a few issues with the way we feel heat. (NB for those who normally read this blog on http://www.sciblogs.co.nz , you’ll need to go onto physicsstop to see the comment – https://sci.waikato.ac.nz/physicsstop ) How hot we feel has more to do than just what the temperature is. Anyone who […]
Continue readingCan you feel the cold?
Writing the last piece about fridges has reminded me about a comment I heard from a fellow student while I was an undergraduate. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but it quite possibly had something to do with objects in liquid nitrogen. Anyway, the comment was something along the lines of ‘The temperature’s so low you […]
Continue readingBBQ Physics
Here’s another little bit of physics seen in everyday stuff. When disconnecting the gas cylinder to our camp stove while on holiday, I got a bit of a shock at how cold it was. It shouldn’t have shocked me – that’s how it should be. When gas is made to expand it cools down. And in […]
Continue readingIce and the freezer
Last Saturday I got around to doing one of those long overdue jobs in the house – defrosting and clearing out the freezer. There are numerous reasons why this was a good idea – it’s not just about getting rid of the food that has been there rather too long, but also about making sure it […]
Continue readingBack to the long-neglected blog
Well, I’m back in at work now after three weeks and four and a half thousand kilometres. Pleased to discover that in my absence the house hadn’t burnt down, there had been no floods and Christmas presents hadn’t been stolen. So it’s now back to trawling through three weeks’ worth of emails, catching up with […]
Continue readingSimple Machines
There’s a lot to do while driving. Look at the road – watch the speedo (98 kmh – OK there), watch the road – look in mirrors – check fuel gauge (half – OK there) – watch road – watch that car at the intersection ahead – check temperature gauge (where it should be) – […]
Continue readingClimate change
I feel that, as a physicist, I should be making some reasonable and informed comment on the Copenhagen summit. After all, climate is immensely physicsy. We have fluid flow, conduction, convection and radiation of heat, interaction of electromagnetic radiation with electrons in molecules, scattering of light by small particles, solar activity (on second thoughts, scrub […]
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