Wednesday 20 October 2010

My smart meter

I was bought a discount smart meter last year. It sits on my desk at home so that I can tell when Mrs B puts on the kettle in the kitchen! The kettle was on when the photograph was taken. Can you see how I know that? For me the most interesting thing has been to quantify the number of kWh used every day. In our house it is about 8 kWh at the moment so I suppose saying an average of 10 kWh might be a good ball park figure for attempting to answer questions like "how many kWh does Wigton use in a day?" I suspect that is an un-Googleable question so you'll have to fugure it out for yourself.

Thursday 14 October 2010

The Horizon programme

Hmm. The previous post didn't publish and stayed as a draft, so none of you will have been able to read it. Hope you had a good Powers of 10 day - do watch that 10 minute film from the web link.

Monday's Horizon documentary about what happened before the Big Bang is very good.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vdkmj/Horizon_20102011_What_Happened_Before_the_Big_Bang/

I thought that the most useful bits were at the end when they bothered to get away from the maths based theorising and actually talked about finding experimental evidence to back up the claims.

Friday 8 October 2010

Various things

Can I remind you to celebrate world Powers of 10 Day on Sunday?

http://www.powersof10.com/



Also next Tuesday 9pm BBC2 there is a Horizon documentary about what happened before the Big Bang. The idea is that there was a multi-verse and our Universe happens to be one of squillions out there. This means that the statistical fluke that brought life would have to happen so eliminating the need for God to start the Universe. You get rid of God by invoking squillions of Universes that we can't touch. Make your own mind up - see what evidence they give.



Yesterday 12 Nobel Prize winners wrote to The Times to protest against the immigration cap because it would have stopped the UK winning a lot of Nobel Prizes, including this year's Nobel Physics Prize.