I’ve been having some discussion with a collaborator in Sydney regarding a numerical model that we are developing. It concerns the response of the brain to pulses of magnetic field, but for the purposes of this blog entry, that is immaterial. One thing that we’ve been grappling with is ‘dealing with infinity’. Basically, in physical […]
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Nonsense maths
This one has hit the blogs recently, but, since it’s quite amusing – and perhaps a bit disturbing – it’s worth a comment. Kimmo Eriksson has recently published a paper on ‘The Nonsense Math Effect’. The study was conceptually very simple. It used two hundred participants, all of whom had postgraduate degrees, with the participants […]
Continue readingHappy Christmas
Blogging has ground to a halt in recent days, as I try to get other things done, such as research proposals, reviewing a PhD thesis, supervising a summer student, and attending numerous parties. I’m off on holidays very soon, but will be back early January. I’m currently grappling with an ever increasing parameter space in […]
Continue readingVerification and Validation
I’ve worked on a lot of computer models of physics things for my various employers to date. Although I’d describe myself as primarily a physicist, I’m also a computer modeller – that’s what holds together my work on mould growth in grain silos, dispersion of dust within pig-sheds, infra-red sensors, radar propagation, electrical behaviour of […]
Continue readingIn a not-quite symmetric world
An interesting problem to ask students to think about is this: Write down a definition of ‘left’ (as in the opposite of right). It’s something every adult knows, but how do you define it. There’s little wonder that children take a long time to grasp which is left and which is right. One might say: […]
Continue readingA tip for the scholarship physics exam
My last entry gave a couple of tips for exams in general. Now, here’s a tip specifically for the NZQA scholarship physics exam. In part, it comes from an assessment of the interviews I’ve been doing with first year students and practising physicists on the way that mathematics is used in physics. One really strong […]
Continue readingWhat do students make of physics and maths…
Last week I did my first interview with students regarding a small research project I’m doing – looking at the ways that students percieve the relationship between physics and maths and how similar they are in their thinking to expert physicists. It was an interesting interview. I had four students, and their was quite a […]
Continue readingHow many significant figures?
The overstating of accuracy is something that physics teachers have to continually correct. Just because one’s calculator gives an answer to ten significant figures doesn’t mean one should quote it to ten significant figures. I’ve just looked up the location of Nakedbus’s Auckland City bus stop. It was very easy to do – drawing from […]
Continue readingThe shortest distance between two points
I remember as a student being presented with the proof that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (at least, on a 2 dimensional flat surface). Although it’s almost blatantly obvious, it can be formally proved through Calculus of Variations. However, the quickest route between two points is not necessarily a straight […]
Continue readingWhat 3am looks like
I shan’t apologise for the lack of entries – other things have been on our mind in recent days. But Benjamin is sleeping just now, which gives a few minutes for some blogging. He’s already been doing a bit of physics – studying the continuity equation. That is, the change in mass equals the mass […]
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