This week I’ve been talking to my third year mechanical engineering class about the Lagrangian approach to solving dynamical problems. OK, please don’t close your browser now, rest assured that you don’t need to know what the Lagrangian approach is to follow this post. (if you do, then click here.) I reckon there are two ways […]
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The dangers of children’s books
I was on data-projector duty at church yesterday. That meant I had to press the buttons that made sure the correct verse of the song was showing at the correct time, a job that requires more concentration and co-ordination than you might think. When I’m sitting close to a projector, I find the way that dust […]
Continue readingSimple things updated
With reference to my previous entry, come to think of it, a seismograph is pretty well a mass on a spring. And a car suspension system isn’t much more glorified either.
Continue readingWhy do we do masses on springs?
This question arises from the 3rd year dynamics paper I’m teaching at the moment. How come in lectures we only ever cover simple examples of things (in the context of this paper, moving things), like a mass bouncing on a spring, rather than realistic examples, like a washing machine or aircraft engine. It’s a fair […]
Continue readingThe reductionist physicist
So, I’ve now had my fifteen minutes of fame. I’m sure some of you will have read the article about my trip to Germany in The Waikato Times. I have to say that I was quite glad that the reporter (Annette Taylor) kindly left out a remark I made to her during the interview where […]
Continue readingPhysicsStop is 100
Yes – PhysicsStop is now 100 – that is, this is the one hundreth entry. For those of you wishing to indulge in nostalgia, view the first entry here. Hopefully I’ve convinced you a that physics can be (at times) a little bit interesting. I’ve written some serious stuff, some light-hearted stuff, some short entries, […]
Continue readingWhy I am not a chemist
OK , so I’ve told you why I didn’t become a biologist, but what about chemistry? That’s a pretty fun science area too. At school, I had a great chemistry teacher, and when I started university I thought there was still a small chance that I could be tempted away from physics towards chemistry as a […]
Continue readingScience Fraud
I’ve just been reading an article in Physics World about a high-flying young physicist who deceived the science community for several years (including the editors of ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’), by, putting it bluntly, making up his results. After reading it I have several questions in my head. What makes someone do that? Why did it take […]
Continue readingMy experiment won’t work (or, Why I am not a biologist)
Let me take you back a few years, to when I was in year 9 at school, in the fair county of Sussex (in UK). In my biology class we did an experiment to look at the preference for woodlice for light or dark. Basically two petri dishes, one painted back, with lids, joined together […]
Continue readingNZ Scholarships – hot exam tip number 2
For you final year school students contemplating doing the scholarship physics exam, you should check out the examiners’ report on last year’s exam which has just been released on the NZQA website. (Scroll down to ‘physics’ and then download the 2008 files). It gives a summary of the skills successful and unsuccessful candidates possessed. Even […]
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