I’ve often thought that there would be a market in the scientific community for an intellectual analog to the deplorable Girls Gone Wild phenomenon. Called Researchers Gone Weird it would be an examination of times when generally good or excellent scientists have fallen off the rails. In my dream world, this show would be hosted [...]
Filed under: Physics, Skepticism | No Comments »
Hat tip to @lukeweston on Twitter who put me on to this — there’s a free public lecture on tonight at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre that sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun. Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist best know as one of the discoverers of pulsars, will be giving a [...]
Filed under: Education, Events, Physics, Science | 4 Comments »
While SWOTVAC (a.k.a. ‘almost exams’) is on, I have very little blogging time. As such, I’ve set up a few reposts of older pieces that recent readers may not have seen before. Enjoy! —– …as in the case of this article on Conservapedia. Currently my mind is playing a kind of tug-of-war with itself; as [...]
Filed under: Creationism, Physics | 1 Comment »
I’ve just called up and made an offer to volunteer for the Greens on election day. I’ve done a tiny spot of volunteering previously, and may do some more before the election — but as many of you will know from past posts, I’m not a member of the Greens, and I don’t plan to [...]
Filed under: Physics | 1 Comment »
Give or take a month or two, that is. Does anybody remember when my grand plan was to write a series of short crash courses about my subjects, to give a feel of what it’s like to be a physics and maths student and give an overview of what it is I actually study? Does [...]
Filed under: Maths, Physics, University | 1 Comment »
So, from the very very small of quantum mechanics we shoot off to the very, very fast of Einsteinian relativity. When people talk about Einstein’s theory of relativity they often distinguish between the special and general theories of relativity — the former of which can be thought of as a subset of the latter. Relativity [...]
Filed under: Physics, University | 4 Comments »
I finally got around to finishing Half Life 2: Episode Two today — naturally, I started it before the start of this semester and then had to put it on hold for a little while until I had some free time again. For those of you who don’t know what you’re missing:
Filed under: Miscellany, Physics | 3 Comments »
In my article on quantum mechanics I made the following correct, but imprecise point: Quantum objects can be described in terms of ‘wavefunctions’, typically denoted when the function depends on position and time, and when it only depends on position. This wavefunction is related to the probability that a particle can be found in a particular [...]
Filed under: Physics, University | 1 Comment »
You’d be hard pressed to find a more abused scientific discipline than quantum mechanics. It’s been co-opted by theologians, new age proponents, quacks, cranks and charlatans to promote everything from god to crystal healing. Deepak Chopra has personally taken quantum mechanics roughly in the country custom so often we should be taking him to The [...]
Filed under: Physics, University | 1 Comment »
From thermal physics, which was undoubtedly my least favourite subject this semester, we forge boldly forward into what ranks as one of my favourite subjects at university thus far — the study of Classical Mechanics. Anybody who did high school science will probably remember having done something that falls under the umbrella of classical mechanics [...]
Filed under: Physics, University | 2 Comments »
