Tuesday, 31 May 2011

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

Here is a link to a BBC programme. The warning is that it could be considered to have a left-wing bias, but if you are aware of that and think clearly, you are quite capable of making up your own mind.

What I liked was that he goes through the history of the idea of ecosystems. The Physics link is that some people modelled the feedback mechanisms using electronic circuits. Later it was discovered that the systems were far more complex than imagined. Though they didn't say in the programme, this would bring it under the topic of Chaos Theory in Physics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011rbws/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_The_Use_and_Abuse_of_Vegetational_Concepts/

Listen to this Guardian podcast

Matty Hoban is a former student of mine at The Becket School, Nottingham. He is currently doing a PhD in Physics in London. I have just found out that he appeared on the podcast of the Science section of the Guradian newspaper's website back in January. Amazing!

Here's the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/audio/2011/jan/31/science-weekly-podcast-supercomputer-ikea-archaeology

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Tensioning weights for railway cables

This photograph is from the high speed line to the Channel Tunnel just north of the River Thames in Essex. You can see similar on the viaducts in Carlisle. They are to put tension into the cables to keep them taut. They are made of concrete and you put on different numbers, just like the slotted masses we use in the lab. Notice the intricate system of insulators to stop electrical conduction. And in this case you can call them weights, not masses, because gravity is pulling them down. I came across a fantastic quotation from Sir Patrick Moore: "Gravity is the force that gives weight to mass."



Sunday, 17 April 2011

I think we've found coal


We went to stay at the highest pub in Britain, set in bleak moorland just over the county boundary into Yorkshire. As you can see from the photograph, it was a mining inn. What was odd was that they were mining coal. I am struggling to think of a coal mine that high up. We walked along the Pennine Way for a couple of miles and found this black outcrop of rocks. I guess it must be coal. Closer inspection revealed poor shale not really good enough for burning, but look at the think layers of sandstone between the shales. This would suggest episodes of flooding washing sand across the swamps that would have provided the mud and vegetation for the black shales. Not really physics, I know, but I love geology too.



Tuesday, 12 April 2011

Cairngorm Mountain

We drove through the night on Friday to see rare wildlife in the woods at dawn. Mid-morning we were up watching the skiers on Cairngorm Mountain. They get them up the mountain with a funicular railway. You can see it snaking upm to the ski station on the second picture. In fact, there are two trains that are strung together on a long cable. One goes up whilst the other comes down. Hence gravity is doing a lot of the work of lifting the lower train as the upper train falls. The falling train gives its gravitational potential energy to the rising train. It is a single track but there is a short section of double track half way. There is no other place where they will meet because they are tied by a cable.





Sunday, 3 April 2011

Sk8r Boi

We've bought two skateboards for the Physics Department to help us to demonstrate Newton's 3rd Law and the conservation of linear momentum. If you'd been in Silloth this afternoon you'd have seen Mrs B and me having our first ever goes on a skateboard. Deprived childhoods, I'm afraid. I want to learn to skateboard...can anyone help? The picture shows the bottom of one of the boards: 1. Another mess up with mass and weight. Oh dear. 2. I'm 65kg. This surely can't be right.

Thursday, 24 March 2011

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/