Computing
A Simple R6G Dye Laser – Part 3
If you’ve been following along (well done you!) then you might recall that we need a fast switch that works at a very high voltage for the laser’s pump lamp and, indeed, for the laser [more…]
Mathematics
Computing
A Simple R6G Dye Laser – Part 2
Lamp Light And Laser Light Pulsed lasers, like this, use an intense burst of white light (lasting fractions of a second) to stimulate the electrons in the laser’s gain medium. In the above photo you [more…]
Computing
A Simple R6G Dye Laser – Part 1
Introduction First of all, it’s great to see that Going-Postal is still up and running. It’s always a pleasure to write an article and have it published here. It’s also good to see a lot [more…]
Health
Nutritional Surveys, how believable are they?
First though, I hope this was anonymous. (Wikimedia Commons) UN Phone Survey Last month, a world-wide telephone survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: “Would you please give your honest opinion [more…]
20th Century
Enigma deception
A typical three wheeled Enigma with inspection cover open and showing the three wheels in position. When the Second World War began, three wheels became five. There is a scene in the film The Imitation [more…]
19th Century
John Scott Russell
Imagine, if you will, that you have decided to go for a horse ride along a canal towpath. You see a canal barge making its way along the canal and in front of the barge [more…]
Health
A Brief Face To Face With Death
I was bored the other day and decided to download the Office of National Statistics Weekly Death data for England and Wales for the last 5 years (as you do). It can be found here [more…]
Health
Lives, damned lives and statistics
On January 11th, the BBC and Sky each made great play of ‘the worst excess deaths since the second world war’ announced for 2020. This clearly conveyed a message that the corona virus was indeed [more…]
20th Century
Benford’s Law
Benford’s Law is a theory of leading digits in numerical data sets. Whilst one might think that the frequency of the leading digit would be equally distributed across the nine digits each with approximately 11% [more…]