Buried in my junk mail this weekend was a catalogue containing all those gadgets that might come in handy once in a lifetime – you know the sort – solar powered tea strainers and personalised tin-openers – that kind of thing (I must get some to give out as Christmas presents…) One was a water-powered calculator. I haven’t seen […]
Continue readingTag: water
Waves
It’s amazing what you can see on Google Earth. Take a look at the sea around the Raglan to Kawhia coastline, for example. You can immediately see why it attracts surfers – on the day the current satellite image was taken, there was a near-perfect set of waves rolling in off the Tasman. There’s a lot of […]
Continue readingSeeing underwater
I read a very short news snippet in Tuesday’s NZ Herald that said that a British nuclear submarine had collided with a French counterpart. Admittedly, the source quoted is ‘The Sun’ newspaper in the UK – which is not best known for its accuracy in reporting – but leaving that issue aside, you have got […]
Continue readingYet more swimming pool physics
Imagine, if your mind can cope with it, Michael Phelps, decked in his speedos, about to dive into a pool of golden syrup. If the thought isn’t too much for you to cope with, now ask yourself what stroke he should swim to get to the other end as quickly as possible. As explained in […]
Continue readingMore swimming pool physics
Have you ever thought why water is difficult to move through? What property does it have that air doesn’t, that makes it an effort to get anywhere in it? The answer is utterly straightforward, but it is worth saying: it is simply more dense than air. If you want to move through it, you’ve got […]
Continue readingSwimming pool physics
It’s summer, and for me that means the university’s 50 metre outdoor swimming pool is open. Lots of lunchtime lengths, dodging the morons who can’t cope with the concept that lanes are for lane swimming, rather than playing ball games. There’s a lot of physics that goes in with swimming. Hydrodynamics, the study of how […]
Continue readingThe second law of thermodynamics
So now you know the first law – what’s the second law? This one is a whole lot easier to define since you don’t need to fret over what exactly energy IS, and, historically speaking, it was understood long before the first law. (It is relegated to being the second law of thermodynamics since the first […]
Continue readingThe first law of thermodynamics
I’ve used the word ‘energy’ a lot in recent posts (like yesterday’s), but haven’t really said what it is. We all have some idea of what energy means – it’s a resource you need to do something useful, such as propel a car, or play a video game, heat your house or power refigerator. (This […]
Continue readingTraffic
I visited a company in Auckland yesterday, which involved negotiating the famous Auckland traffic. Now, I have to say that arriving in Auckland after the rush hour proved a very smart move, and we cruised to our destination without any fuss, but it got me thinking about traffic flow and physics.
Continue readingWater, water everywhere
Yesterday a very politely written letter arrived at the department, addressed to the physicists. I was curious as to what it was, and read it carefully all the way to the word ‘homeopathy’, at which time I began preparing a space for it in the ‘cranky letter’ folder of my filing cabinet. I will spare you […]
Continue reading