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Monthly Archives: January 2010
Fruit Gums and graphs
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 graph, statistics
3 Comments
Milky Way Transit Authority
The multi-talented Samuel Arbesman created this great Milky Way map in the style of Harry Beck’s famous London Underground map.
Tagged map, milkyway
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Aspect ratio
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
Teaching statistics with Fruit Gums
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 … Continue reading
Tagged pedagogy, statistics
1 Comment
Minifigs
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 lego
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Animals and earthquakes
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. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV4EMzyJsqU[/youtube] Watch the dog.
Tagged animal, earthquake
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Why grit roads?
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 grit, rocksalt, snow
2 Comments
Satellite view of snow-covered UK from space
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 satellite, snow
2 Comments
Celebrity Science 2009
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 badscience, celebrity
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Interesting design features of my hotel room
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 design
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Resolution and Strictly Come Dancing
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 resolution
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