There are a significant number of people who view scientists as boffins in white coats who lock themselves in their labs for twelve hours a day while they invent things that are entirely useless to anybody. This view is somewhat stereotyped, and I hope my blog goes a small way to changing it. (Am I […]
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What’s the catch?
Last weekend Alison Campbell and I took a trip to New Plymouth to do a day session with final year school students to help them prepare for their physics and biology scholarship exams. (Alison did the Biology half, I did the physics). I do hope the students got something useful out of it. Doing this kind […]
Continue readingThe endless pace of technology
I discovered at coffee time this morning that one of my work colleagues has never seen a record. That’s record, as in the black vinyl disc with grooves. This isn’t a child, it’s an adult old enough to have a degree. From this I conclude that 1. The pace of technology is faster than I appreciated […]
Continue readingBeyond 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 readingThe3is in three final
I attended the final of the The3is in Three competition on Wednesday night. It was a really entertaining evening; compere Te Radar was in great form, as were the eight finalists (N.B. I know that those of you who are not from NZ won’t have the slightest idea who Te Radar is, but I’m sure […]
Continue readingUsing words is OK
I’m in the thick of marking exam papers. In physics, a lot of what a student does is mathematically based, so a fair bit of any exam is going to contain calculations of things. But don’t think that it is compulsory to make your answer totally incomprehensible. Many of the exam answers I see from […]
Continue readingVirtual field trips
If you think it unfair that your children get to go on lots of exciting school trips that you never went on this is for you – virtual field trips throughout New Zealand on the LEARNZ website. Sent to me by NZ Institute of Physics – thanks guys.
Continue readingThe physicist joke
So, for those who want it in full, here is the joke I referred to earlier. A geneticist, a physicist, and a statistician are all asked by a gambler to advise him on which horse to place his money in the Melbourne Cup.
Continue readingMore chemistry-bashing
There is nothing a physicist likes better than to get one up on a chemist. In a friendly way of course. Rather like New Zealand beating Australia at some sporting event. So it is with great delight that I hear that the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to a physicist. (See commentary […]
Continue readingEverything’s relative
What does ‘big’ mean? How big does something have to be in order to reasonably carry that adjective? The answer, of course, is ‘it depends’. For example, I am pretty tall. But after standing next to someone much taller than me on a tram last week, I realise that maybe I am not so tall after all. I […]
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