When stationary is fast

One of the great lines on the cult BBC show 'Red Dwarf' goes (approximately, from memory) like this: Can't you go any faster, like so we're not being overtaken by stationary objects? I'm sure my youngest sister would be able to correct the wording, and tell me immediately which episode it's from, who says it […]

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Notation notation notation

Physicists and engineers have a particular fondness for using symbols for things. Thus, the speed of light becomes 'c'. Planck's constant is 'h'. And so forth. Not content with the latin alphabet, they have commandeered the greek one too: The Stefan-Bolztmann constant is  'sigma', the permittivity of free space is epsilon0 (the greek letter epsilon […]

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Gender-based subject choices

The UK's Institute of Physics has just released a report "Closing doors: exploring gender and subject choice at schools" It follows on from the report a year or so back: "It's different for girls", which looked at the way girls experienced physics. I blogged about the latter report here.  The report is not long, so […]

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How big is an atom?

I started back at work on Monday thinking that it would be a nice, peaceful day, with no-one else around on campus. Surely, on a beautiful, sunny, 6th January, the entire of Hamilton except for myself would be on the beach at Raglan. Wow, was I mistaken. The campus was buzzing with activity and there […]

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