To err is human, but to make a real mess requires a computer. Whether it is sending out a gas bill for ten million dollars, or sending a letter to the parents of a one-hundred-and-four year-old woman reminding them that she is due to start school, the rise of the computer has certainly opened up […]
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Beyond cornflakes
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 […]
Continue readingMonopoles, Dipoles, Quadrupoles and the like
The alternate stretching and squashing casued by a gravitational wave is an example of a quadrupole oscillation. This is another word that probably means very little to most readers, and, unless you like maths, Wikipedia isn’t going to help you, so I’ll explain. Let’s start with a monopole. You get a monopole when you put ‘stuff’ […]
Continue readingApproximately speaking
Physicists are notorious for making approximations. This character trait is the subject of many jokes – for example, one rather rambling one involving a physicist advising a punter on which horse to put his money ends with the line "Oh, didn’t I tell you – my calculations assumed a spherical horse rolling through a vacuum." […]
Continue readingGeometric algebra
Here’s a lovely quote that students will empathize with: "A recent study on the use of vectors by introductory physics students summarized the conclusions in two words: "vector avoidance". This state of mind tends to propagate through the physics curriculum. In some 25 years of graduate physics teaching, I have noted that perhaps a third […]
Continue readingWhat has log of -1 to do with a blog?
OK, following from my ability to break web-applications (it’s not the first time I’ve done it – a couple of years ago I managed to break one of our staff-only applications on our website – about 30 seconds later I got a call saying "we don’t know what you’ve done but you weren’t supposed to […]
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