While generally speaking I’m very pleased to hear physics words appear in everyday conversation, I would prefer for them to be used approximately correctly. ‘Exponentially‘ is a case in point – it gets used for something that keeps getting bigger, regardless of how exponential it really is. So, while ‘nanotechnology’ is a good word to […]
Continue readingMonth: February 2013
Teaching how to think physics
One of the things I frequently bleat about is that physics isn’t synonymous with stuffing numbers into formulae. Therefore, it’s with some horror that I’ve watched through my attempts at doing the 2012 NZQA Scholarship Physics exam and seen myself stuffing numbers into formulae. At least, that is how many of the videos come across […]
Continue reading2012 Scholarship exam finished
Yesterday Sam and I finished filming my attempts to do the 2012 Physics Scholarship exam. There were some tough questions in there. I got on top of them, I think, with some careful thinking through the principles involved, which is a very good way to start when you are bemused by a question. I’m sure […]
Continue readingShock fronts: literature and surfing
One of baby Benjamin’s books has a storyline that goes like this. (Not wishing to fall foul of the Copyright Act I shall not quote directly from it – any sensible quote is about 10% or greater of the work!) There’s an animal that’s being chased by another animal. This second animal is being chased […]
Continue readingWhen inifinity isn’t infinite
I’ve been having some discussion with a collaborator in Sydney regarding a numerical model that we are developing. It concerns the response of the brain to pulses of magnetic field, but for the purposes of this blog entry, that is immaterial. One thing that we’ve been grappling with is ‘dealing with infinity’. Basically, in physical […]
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