I was having a conversation this morning about the status of the poster at an academic conference. At most conferences there will be one or more ‘poster sessions’. A ‘poster presentation’ is an alternative to an oral presentation – instead of preparing power point slides to send your audience to sleep, you do the same with […]
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Pity the poor PhD student…
I’ve recently been asked to be an examiner for a PhD thesis. This is the first time I’ve been given this honour. It is a slightly disconcerting thought as the success of the last three (or possibly more) years of a student’s life hangs on what I choose to say about his thesis. When I […]
Continue readingIrrelevant physics
Here’s a question taken from a well-used first-year undergraduate physics text: Suppose you are standing on the center of a merry-go-round that is at rest. You are holding a spinning bicycle wheel over your head so that its rotation axis is pointing upward. The wheel is rotating counterclockwise when observed from above. Suppose you now […]
Continue readingGood science speaks for itself
I was at the NIWA science fair at the Hamilton Gardens yesterday morning, talking to some of the children who had put together displays on their science projects. I can’t say anything specific, not least because the prizes haven’t been anounced yet, but I will say that, as ever, it is a real privelege to […]
Continue readingMore physics with aluminium foil
I gave a talk to the Junior Naturalists in Hamilton last Friday. It had some similarity to the talks I gave in June to the Osborne Days (year 12 and 13 school students), but I needed to change a few things because 1. The audience was younger, and 2. I wasn’t prepared to cart voluminous apparatus […]
Continue readingSome thoughts on assessment
I went to a very interesting seminar this morning. Phil Race, from the UK, was presenting about making assessments better in tertiary teaching. There was a lot in his talk (you can download it and other information from www.phil-race.co.uk ) – I’ll just summarise some of the points that are most interesting to me. 1. […]
Continue readingPut your trust in a computer…
I’ve mentioned before the way that it is tempting to put your faith in the output of a computer program, particularly if it involves impressive graphics and displays words that you don’t understand. But this phenomenon doesn’t apply just to computers. I’ve been seeing it in my students’ lab work too – where an instrument […]
Continue readingNewton’s third law
In yesterday’s tutorial I had an enlightening discussion with the students about Newton’s third law. Enlightening for me just as much as I hope it was for them. You’ll find the law in textbooks phrased something like "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Sounds simple, and to someone who is well […]
Continue readingFluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field
In uncertain times, its good to know there are some things that never change – such as day follows night, my compass needle always points in the same direction, and England will always underperform at the World Cup. Well, scrub the middle one, actually. In our lab, at any rate, there are some shocking variations in […]
Continue readingAaaarrrhh first year
It’s no secret that I don’t like teaching first year classes. I find third year undergraduates far easier to teach. I think the main reason for this is that with the third years I don’t have such a large gap between my knowledge of the subject and theirs. That means that I don’t need to […]
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