For some reason I have yet to discover, the flagpole at The University of Waikato on Monday was flying the flag of the Republic of Ireland, at half-mast. However, observing this for the first time from the Faculty of Science and Engineering tearoom on Monday morning, it was hard to be sure just which flag […]
Continue readingTag: light
How to win a Nobel Prize in Physics
Well, if I knew that I would be busy doing it. Perhaps you’d be better off asking Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess who have just won the 2011 prize for their discovery of the ever accelerating expansion of the universe. I love the story I’ve heard (whether it is true or not I don’t know) that, […]
Continue readingWhy are radio telescopes so big?
It’s great to hear that NZ is an integral part of the Australasian bid for a giant radio-telescope network. The Square Kilometre Array promises to produce some great images of southern skies in the radio frequency band. Radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, just like light waves, and can be used to provide […]
Continue readingA photon walks into a hotel…
A photon walks into a hotel and checks in. "Do you want a hand with your luggage?" asks the receptionist. "No thanks", replies the photon, "I’m travelling light". Thanks to my friend Julie for that one. But it got me thinking about the quantum nature of things that may not immediately appear quantum-like. There’s a […]
Continue readingSchlieren imaging
I’ve been sent this link to a movie of a shock wave from a trombone. You’ve got to feel sorry for the poor clarinetist who is sitting in front. This sort of thing can be done neatly with the method of schlieren imagaing. (See some more examples here) This is a ‘simple’ way of picking up […]
Continue readingWet house, dry house?
We’re looking for a new house at the moment. We’ve decided to be a lot more environmentally friendly and shift out of Cambridge and move to Hamilton to cut down the pesky commute in the mornings and evenings. We haven’t made much progress, though, with finding a house – what we’re looking for is in […]
Continue readingLight fantastic
D’oh. Missed the exploding meteor last night. From the news reports it sounds like a pretty impressive sight. (N.B. I like the comment on the stuff.co.nz article that says "Faster than a plane = definitely over 10000 km an hour. I don’t know how many planes this guy has travelled in, but doing 10000 km […]
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 […]
Continue readingMirror trickery
Last week I heard about for the first time something that is common knowledge to all women in the western world – namely that women’s clothes shops use convex mirrors to make you appear thinner. Since I don’t frequent women’s clothes shops particularly often (I don’t frequent men’s clothes shops more than is strictly necessary, […]
Continue readingA daylight conundrum
Our organic alarm clock has now taken to jumping on the bed at about 5 in the morning and purring very loudly in an attempt to persuade us it’s breakfast time. It’s not surprising, since sunrise (and therefore cat-rise, if not Marcus-rise) is becoming earlier and earlier. Daylight hours are now long – in fact the […]
Continue reading