The continuity equation

Yesterday, being a warm, sunny Labour Day holiday  (those words don’t usually go together) we decided we needed to get out of the house and go somewhere interesting, and chose the Waitomo area. Didn’t go into the show caves this time (done those a few times before) but chose to keep the bank account under […]

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Old and new

Can’t resist telling you this… Tuesday, after the conference sessions had finished and before the conference dinner, I travelled with my students by train from Wellington to Lower Hutt, to do a lightning visit to a couple of labs at Industrial Research Ltd. It was a very informative visit – I need to spend a […]

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The varied world of physics

It was a very interesting day at the NZ Institute of Physics conference. I learned about some of the physics experiments done at the South Pole, how to trap, observe and count atoms (and that high school physics teachers who tell their students that you can’t see atoms need to update their knowledge), some results […]

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Whose fault is bad science understanding?

I’ve been forwarded the following from one of our teaching development staff – it’s a transcript of a very recent lecture by Prof Ian Chubb, Australia’s Chief Scientist. http://www.universityworldnews.com/filemgmt_data/files/Ian%20Chubb-%20NTEU%20Address%206%20October%202011.pdf In the lecture, Prof Chubb comments on the lack of science understanding in the country as a whole and how this leads to the country being […]

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Misleading reflections

For some reason I have yet to discover, the flagpole at The University of Waikato on Monday was flying the flag of the Republic of Ireland, at half-mast. However, observing this for the first time from the Faculty of Science and Engineering tearoom on Monday morning, it was hard to be sure just which flag […]

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Student opinion counts

On Saturday I ran a session for final year school students who are soon to take the Scholarship Physics exam. There were just over fifty of them, and they were a lively group. I thought that overall the day (well, half-day really) went pretty well, and we managed to cover more than what I’ve done […]

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