I’ve just bought some thermometers, to use with a first-year physics class. A box of ten of them. Alcohol filled, which makes them a whole lot safer than the mercury ones. (If you have a mercury thermometer, my advice is never, ever break it, especially if it’s at home. I broke one at university a […]
Continue readingAs part of our trip southwards last week, we visited one of the many caves scattered across the Margaret River region. The immediate impression on entering the 'Jewel Cave' is its vast size. It's hard to estimate just how big the main cavern is, but as a rough guess maybe 100 metres by 50 metres […]
Continue readingI overheard the following conversation at the best coffee outlet on campus yesterday: "Well, winter's nearly over. We're past the shortest day so it's getting warmer. And we've had eleven frosts so far this year, and the record for Hamilton is twelve, so there can only be one more to come." – Anonymous Where do […]
Continue readingIn the lab, my summer student has been working on a small device to keep a small piece of equipment at a stable temperature. It uses a Peltier device – in essence it's a solid-state heat pump. Pass through current one way, and heat is drawn from the top surface to the bottom; pass current […]
Continue readingLast week I attended a conference on Emergent Learning and Threshold Concepts, here at the University of Waikato. It was a very interesting couple of days. As far as academic conferences go, it was unusual in that it was really cross-disciplinary. We had engineers mixing with physiotherapists, and management consultants with dancers. It certainly was […]
Continue readingThe last couple of days have seen our Engineering Design Show. This is where our 2nd/3rd/4th year Engineering students get to talk about and show off the various projects they've been working on in the last year. It's very interesting to see the range of activities going on, and there are some 'competitive events' – […]
Continue readingFirst things first. PhysicsStop is back on-line after an enjoyable two-week break in warm and sunny southern England. Second things second. What advice can anyone give to the parents of a fourteen-month-old with jetlag who insists that 4 am is time to get up, have breakfast, and feed the chickens (or the "Choo Chuk" as […]
Continue readingHappy Easter everyone. Sorry for lack of blog activity – lots of marking has been building up that I’ve needed to get through. Yesterday we experienced the vacuum-packing ability of a clip-container in a microwave. In this case, it was being used to cook some vegetables for Benjamin’s dinner. The veges were placed in the […]
Continue readingWe’ve had a bumper crop of plums from our two plum trees. Way more than we can eat our way through in the short plum season. It appears that we aren’t the only ones – the last couple of weeks have seen bucket loads of free plums turn up in the tea-room here. (And yet […]
Continue readingIt’s been wonderful watching Benjamin grow in the last nine and a bit weeks. He’s now become fully interactive – he’ll respond to what we do and what’s going on around him. hearing him ‘talk’ is fun – he can come out with an excited string of goos and gahs when he’s happy. Naturally, though, […]
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