Onkalo
On Thursday I happened to turn on the TV and was "greeted" by a couple of Finnish men staring at the camera occasionally saying something about nuclear waste. Intrigued I sat down to see what it was all...
I had a dream
I have always thought that the easy way to tell if you are dreaming or not is to see if the laws of physics apply, if they don't then you are dreaming. Last night I had a dream when the laws of physics...
Completely Bongo
Last week my first year classes were doing a design experiment with a rubber bung on an elastic band. It's quite a good example and students don't find it too difficult to come up with interesting and...
The 3D puppy
After doing about the diffraction grating with my HL class I decided to give them a treat and explain how a hologram is made then show them the puppy hologram I keep hidden under the sink (sounds dubious)....
The balance of power
Today my first year classes did the magnetic flux density practical that I devised a couple of weeks ago. When I did it I got a pretty good result but didn't use exactly the same equipment as I gave to...
Inconveniently complicated truth
It’s atomic physics with the first years and we are working our way through the models of the atom in chronological order. When we got to Thomson and the discovery of the electron I made a statement something...
How LEDs work
We were doing about light sources the other day as part of the HL EM option and one of the students asked how an LED worked and why they are so efficient, first some background about semiconductors. Semiconductors...
Dirt is magnetic
The conversation went like this: Maria: "Is dirt magnetic". Me: "Well only if it's iron dirt". Maria: "No I mean stones and stuff". Me: "If the stones are magnetite I suppose" Maria: "What does that mean?"...
Inclined Plane
I often think how unrealistic a lot of the physics that we teach at this level is. How many times do you come across motion with constant acceleration or a square block sliding down an inclined plane?...
Desktop heater
There was an interesting article in our local paper (Firda) this week about a man who has plumbed his computer into the heating system of his house so that he uses the heat generated to warm the bathroom....