Not Brian Cox

The Brian Cox Wonders of the Universe programmes on Sunday nights have been brilliant. The second programme Stardust was probably the best documentary on Physics I've ever seen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zm833/Wonders_of_the_Universe_Stardust/
But you might have missed JimAl-Khalili on BBC4 on Monday night. He did a brilliant programme about why the sky is black at night even though the Universe is infinite in size. You should watch it! http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yb59m/Everything_and_Nothing_Everything/

Estimation

There haven't been many posts recently. I've been very busy. Further to the last post - the estimation went like this:

We thought that there might be 100 trees per row and 100 rows, meaning that 10,000 trees had been cut down. It seems a lot.

Next estimate the height of the turbine in the picture and the length of one blade. This turbine is at Watchtree.

Estimating

My friend spotted this area of felled trees in the forest above Ennerdale. He challenged his children to estimate how many trees had been felled. Estimating is a particularly important skill in Engineering, but also in Physics. Have a go using the second, more detailed, picture. Let me know what you think.

Physics students write on windows

The window of the students cafe in the Particle Physics building at Oxford was covered in equations. I've been experimenting with board pens in my lab - but don't try this at home (or at school).

Ice at the bottom

We went up to Bowscale Tarn. There was a real oddity - ice on the BOTTOM of the lake near the outflow. Everyone knows that ice is less dense than water and should float. So what happened here? We had several theories but most likely is that in this shallow water, it froze from top to bottom. Then the water at the top was the first to thaw, leaving this oddity.

The tarn used to be a very popular tourist attraction in Victorian times. In one of his worst poems (my opinion), Wordsworth quoted a legend of there being two immortal fish in the lake. If it's true, they must still be there...

If you want to read the poem, here's the link http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/William_Wordsworth/william_wordsworth_340.htm

Museum of the History of Science

The Museum of the History of Science on Broad Street in Oxford occupies a building constructed for the original Asmolean Collection - the world's first public museum. It is next to the Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It is surrounded by the sculptured heads of Greek philosophers. Inside the museum, I found Einstein's chalk board - he delivered a lecture at the university many years ago. They preserved the board. Sorry about the pictures - no camera flash allowed. More to follow about this trip.

Roberts Boyle and Hooke

During the blizzard in Oxford, I went down the High Street to find the memorial on the wall of University College. Boyle's Law for gases now comes towards the end of the Upper Sixth. I didn't know that Robert Hooke was his assistant. Hooke was Newton's bitter rival, best known in physics and engineering for Hooke's Law: the extension of a spring is directly proportional to the applied force as far as the limit of proportionality.