This is something that Aimee Whitcroft at the Science Media Centre in Wellington drew my attention to – thanks Aimee. Most of us who have ever eaten breakfast cereal will probably be familiar with the phenomenon whereby the larger flakes of whatever-your-favourite-breakfast-is tend to be at the top of the packet, whereas the smaller flakes […]
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Climate engineering
So PhysicsWorld has done a nice article on some of the ‘engineering’ solutions that might be available for tackling global warming. Generally they are pretty ambitious global-scale plans to turn down the thermostat a bit, given the premise that either carbon dioxide emissions will not fall sufficiently or that, even if they did, the earth would still be too […]
Continue readingThe greenhouse effect
I’ve been reading in PhysicsWorld about some grand ideas for controlling the earth’s climate by engineering on a global scale. Some sound pretty fanciful, though some might be just plausible. But before I get there (which will probably be another entry) I think it’s worthwhile reminding you what the greenhouse effect actually is. As in, why […]
Continue readingFishics
Eco-systems are of course very complex things – the success of one species is linked to the success of another, which is linked to another, and all of which are linked to outside factors such as climate etc etc. Now there is direct evidence of another degree of complexity in the ocean eco-system, namely that […]
Continue readingThe electricity man cometh…
…and readeth the meter and giveth unto us a very large bill. (Well, the bill got sent by email, but that’s beside the point). Now, I knew it was going to be costly, what with using electricity to heat a house during a cold winter, but I wasn’t quite expecting the figure at the bottom […]
Continue readingNo more energy saving lightbulbs…
Last week I received my (dare I say annual?) invitation to be a judge at the Waikato Science Fair. This is a great event where school children get to show off some of the science projects they have been working on. It fills the pavilion at Hamilton Gardens and is a great exhibition to look […]
Continue readingThermal expansion
Here’s a nice experiment to carry out on a freezing cold morning. Before driving to work / school / shopping centre / Auntie Betty’s, look under the bonnet of your car and make a note of the level of coolant in the expansion tank. Chances are its fairly low. After you get to work or wherever, […]
Continue readingCookery physics revisited
Does anyone know the answer to this question? Why is it that, when you bake a cake or make a loaf of bread, the bit in the centre of the tin always rises more than the bits around the perimeter of the tin?
Continue readingMore than a googol things to count
So this week I said that there weren’t a googol of things in this universe to count. That might not be quite true. It really depends on what you mean by a thing. If it’s something tangible, that you can hold in your hand (like a grain of sand), then that is true. But we […]
Continue readingThe unsolvable problem
In the last few days I’ve been wrestling with one of the unsolvable problems of physics, namely that it is impossible to measure something without changing it. Here’s an example. Suppose I want to measure the temperature of a pot of warm water. I can do it by putting a thermometer in it. Now, since […]
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