Biomechanics

I might have had a bit of a sarcastic tone in my last entry about kicking football penalties, but we shouldn’t jump to the idea that sport science isn’t proper science. After all, it’s what has given Australia three zillion more gold medals than is warranted by its population. Have a look at the Australian Institute […]

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Huygens’ Clocks

I was reminded this week about the story of Huygens’ clocks. Christaan Huygens was one of those too-clever-by-half physicists / mathematicians who was into just about any science that was going on at the time. This seventeenth century dutchman is maybe best known in physics for his work on wave motion, but he was also […]

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Equinox

Last Friday (for most parts of the world – Saturday for us ‘advanced’ people in New Zealand) was the equinox. Loosely described, that’s when the day and night are of equal length – from this moment on and for the next six months all us southern hemispherers will be experiencing longer periods of darkness than […]

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Mass and the Higgs Boson

In the minds of many, the name ‘Large Hadron Collider’ is linked with the words ‘Higgs Boson’. And so it should be – one of the aims of the LHC is to find (or not to find) this mysterious particle. But what is the Higgs boson? It’s to do with mass. In broad terms, mass […]

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Who’s the greatest?

I’ve recently been asked to participate in a ‘cafe scientifique’ event looking at the relative achievements of Darwin and Galileo. For those who don’t know, 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th of the publication of ‘Origin of the Species’ (how very thoughtful it was of him to arrange that both […]

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Attractive scenery

This story might be apocryphal; I haven’t been able to verify it, but it is certainly plausible. Mount Egmont National Park forms almost a perfect circle around Mount Taranaki. Given its status, its bush remains intact, unlike the rest of Taranaki. You get a great view of this dark green circle with a mountain poking […]

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Going around in circles

If there’s one thing that is likely to promote disharmony amongst the physics community, its the use for the f-word. That’s ‘f’ as in ‘fugal’, as in centrifugal.  Now, part of me thinks I should reconsider before writing this entry, but I have recently read a particularly unhelpful  piece on the internet written by a […]

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Newton in action

On the subject of luging, it is the perfect place to illustrate some physics. For those unfamiliar with the Skyline complex, the idea is you sit on a small cart and freewheel down a concrete path, negotiating the various bends inconveniently sited to slow your speed. Great fun, and lots of physics.

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