Monthly Archives: April 2010

Dirty Lightning

Update: More pictures of dirty light­ning, from the eruption of Eyjaf­jalla­jökull in Iceland. Update: Mount Redoubt erupted recently, causing dirty light­ning. One of the recent erup­tions of the Chaitén volcano caused a phe­nomenon called dirty light­ning. The enormous release of smoke caused a … Continue reading

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How to make nicer graphs in Microsoft Excel

I really hate it when I’m presented with a graph like this one: It’s instantly recog­nis­able as one created in Microsoft Excel. For some reason the default settings in Excel produce some of the the ugliest graphs I’ve ever seen. Step 1  —  Fix … Continue reading

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Eyjafjallajökull erupting

In this imagery from NASA’s MODIS satel­lite [pre­vi­ously] you can clearly see the start of the ash plume from the Eyjaf­jalla­jökull volcano towards the bottom of the image.

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Probability and the Grand National

Entropy is a very important concept in physics. When I was taught about entropy it was always related to prob­ab­il­ities, and the problem sheets we did often featured betting, horse races, grey­hounds, etc. All this came back to me this … Continue reading

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How big is your telescope?

I love the way that sci­entific insti­tu­tions name tele­scopes. It started with the “large” tele­scopes like the Large Bin­ocular Tele­scope (LBT), an 11.4-metre tele­scope (made up of two 8.4-metre mirrors) in the Pinaleno Moun­tains of Arizona; the Very Large Tele­scope (VLT), … Continue reading

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Demographics and subject choice

What does your choice of A Level subjects say about you? Could I work out what sort of school you went to, based on your choice of A Levels? The DCSF pub­lishes figures on the uptake of A Level courses. It … Continue reading

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