The Institute of Physics is concerned that physics needs adequate funding in this climate of cuts. I do believe that physics is vital for the future of the country. People who have studied physics will be responsible for providing energy and for the innovative technology that can earn the country billions. Being very careful not to make this column party political, I wanted to comment on what I heard on the business news on Radio 4 this morning. A representative of the business community was saying that the cap on non-EU nationals being allowed to work in the UK was having a big effect. I woke up when she mentioned the energy provider EDF. This is the reason: As physics has been allowed to run down as a subject in this country, we have begun to rely on hiring physicists from abroad. At the moment, strong nations for training physics are Russia, China and Japan. They would be affected by the cap. From my point of view I think the country needs to decide one of two ways:
1. Do we give up on physics because no one here is interested and just hire physicists from the east?
2. Do we decide that hiring from abroad is a bd thing but then work hard to boost physics in this country?
Answers on a postcard... However, I need to make time to write to my MP to air these concerns.
An interesting opinion on wind farms comes from a woman called Sara Maitland. She is a writer who has retreated to silence in a remote part of Galloway. Read what she says by going to her website, clicking on "About me" and scrolling to the bottom. 
It was just such an observation that got Gallileo into trouble. He was the first person to see the moons of Jupiter. They change places over several days showing that they orbit Jupiter. In Gallileo's day, everything was supposed to orbit the Earth. Showing that moons orbitted another object seriously undermined the "Earth as the centre of the universe" theory.
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.
I took this picture earlier in the summer. When the the moon is low down in the sky, the light from the moon comes through the atmosphere at an oblique angle. This means that it travels a longer distance through the air than if it had hit straight on. The light hits tiny particles in the air it is scattered. The short wavelength colours at the blue end of the spectrum are scattered first leaving the redder colours to reach us. Hence the moon looks pink. Incidentally, they say that the moon looks bigger when it is nearer the horizon but that this is an optical illusion.