Monthly Archives: January 2010

Fruit Gums and graphs

Posted on 31st January by Mr Reid

All the data from my Fruit Gums exper­i­ment has one con­tinuous vari­able (the number of gums) and one dis­crete vari­able vari­able (either box number or flavour) so the physicist’s standard graph — the x-y scatter plot — isn’t suit­able. This made it a good … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 3 Comments

Milky Way Transit Authority

Posted on 24th January by Mr Reid

The multi-talented Samuel Arbesman created this great Milky Way map in the style of Harry Beck’s famous London Underground map.

Tagged , | Leave a comment

Aspect ratio

Posted on 20th January by Mr Reid

I hate it when I see someone watching tele­vi­sion in the wrong aspect ratio; for some reason it really bugs me. Aspect ratio is always given as horizontal:vertical. Television pro­grammes are usually pro­duced in one of two formats: “regular” 4:3 and … Continue reading →

Tagged | 1 Comment

Teaching statistics with Fruit Gums

Posted on 17th January by Mr Reid

Fruit Gums can be used to demon­strate the concept of standard devi­ation. Calculating standard devi­ation is easy, it’s simply: Which, with the right teaching, and enough prac­tice, anyone can learn to do. Understanding what standard devi­ation means is far more dif­fi­cult. I bought … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 2 Comments

Minifigs

Posted on 17th January by Mr Reid

The Lego Minifig was pat­ented in 1979. Customising minfigs has become a bit of a phe­nomena. I love these physics mini­figs by dun­echaser: Sir Isaac Newton comes com­plete with apple. Here you get both Young Patent Office Albert Einstein and Old … Continue reading →

Tagged | Leave a comment

Animals and earthquakes

Posted on 14th January by Mr Reid

With earth­quakes being in the news after the mag­nitude 7.0 earth­quake in Haiti I thought it was time to revisit the idea that animals can sense earth­quakes before they happen. Watch the dog.

Tagged , | Leave a comment

Why grit roads?

Posted on 8th January by Mr Reid

Almost every day I walk past this yellow grit con­tainer. I’ve never really paid atten­tion to it before, but it’s cer­tainly in the news at the moment. Why do we grit roads? The term “grit” is a bit of a mis­nomer and … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Satellite view of snow-covered UK from space

Posted on 8th January by Mr Reid

This is what the UK looks like at the moment, covered in snow. Clicking on the image will load a high res­ol­u­tion (250m per pixel) version (3400×4400 px, 3.02MB). The imagery comes from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite’s Rapid … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 2 Comments

Celebrity Science 2009

Posted on 7th January by Mr Reid

The fant­astic Sense About Science has an end-of-year wrap-up of all the science-related non­sense that celebrities have been spouting this year. Sarah Palin, who is just a hor­rible person: “[I don’t] believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — ori­gin­ated from … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 1 Comment

Interesting design features of my hotel room

Posted on 6th January by Mr Reid

There were a couple of clever design fea­tures in the hotel room I stayed in recently. Every other “fold” in the shower curtain was split from ring-to-ring. If you bunched up the curtain you could easily remove it in one motion, … Continue reading →

Tagged | Leave a comment

Resolution and Strictly Come Dancing

Posted on 2nd January by Mr Reid

The tele­vi­sion pro­gramme, Strictly Come Dancing, can be used to demon­strate the concept of res­ol­u­tion. Normally there are four judges on the show, but towards the end of the run the number of judges was increased to five with the addi­tion … Continue reading →

Tagged | 1 Comment