Yesterday I attended a very interesting discussion on the problem of student collusion in assignments. It's a really grey area that is particularly prevelant in the sciences and engineering. This is the kind of thing we mean: Student A and Student B discuss their assignment one evening. Together, they think through what processes are needed […]
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Password entropy
As part of some 'NetSafe' training, I was shown this lovely xkcd cartoon http://xkcd.com/936/ . Password entropy. That's a good way of putting it. The statistical mechanics definition of entropy would be k ln W, where k is Boltzmann's constant, W is the number of permutations possible, and ln is 'the natural logarithm'. Higher […]
Continue readingDon’t trust the machine
Back to blogging, after a nice holiday in Taranaki dodging the rain showers (and, as it turned out, the volcano, which we never even got a glimpse of) and a frantic week of lab work while the undergraduates were away. Both were very interesting, but it's the lab work I'll talk about here. Something that […]
Continue readingExplaining the blatantly obvious
I've had a few difficulties in some discussions with students recently. It comes down to this: "How do I explain something that is so blatantly obvious it doesn't need explanation?" The problem really is that a particular concept can be obvious to me, but not obvious to a student. The danger is then that, in […]
Continue readingApparent forces
A couple of weeks ago I had the misfortune to be on a bus which had an accident. I wasn't hurt, because I was safely seated, which is more than I can say for one unfortunate passenger who was still on his way to his seat at the time. It wasn't a high-speed event – […]
Continue readingDon’t moan about it if you haven’t actually taught it.
At a recent staff meeting here, the topic of students' writing ability came up (yet again)! Why are our engineering students and physics students just so bad at writing in whole sentences, using correction punctuation and using consistent tenses? Why can't they string four relevant sentences together to make a paragraph that actually makes a […]
Continue readingThe advantage of a transponder
So, as I said, it appears that it's awfully hard to hide a commercial airliner from military radar. But let's backtrack a bit. Why do aircraft carry transponders? (What is a transponder?) There are a couple of reasons here. First, we need to look at a big problem with radar. It has limited range. We […]
Continue readingA fun experiment to try at your desk
I received the latest PhysicsWorld magazine from the Institute of Physics yesterday. A quick flick through it reveals a fantastic demonstration you can do with kids (or grown-up kids) to show how strong friction can be. Take two telephone directories, and interleave the pages (so every page of book A has a page from book […]
Continue readingWhat makes something show on radar?
One of the questions on everyone's lips at the moment is "How does a large passenger jet simply disappear from radar without trace?" It is clearly very distressing for anyone with friends or relatives on board – not knowing what has happened. As I write this, there still seems to be a complete lack of […]
Continue readingIn cyberspace no one can hear you scream
So, you spend six days working frantically on a large project proposal in order to meet the ludicrous deadline (see previous post), and just as you think that the it's under control and the goal is in sight, someone walks onto the pitch, picks up the goal posts and deposits them in the vicinity of […]
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