Hobbies
At the next junction, turn left
It was whilst approaching a junction where the options are to turn left or go straight ahead – I was going straight ahead – that I had to move slightly to the right as there [more…]
Physics
Arts
The story of Matilda
Remember old Aesop and his Fables? There’s one about the boy who was set to guard the sheep and as he was bored, he called the alarm to liven things up a bit. Eventually the [more…]
Arts
Ice Station Zero
Idly browsing the Interweb the other day, I came across this BBC article on the terrible outlook for the ice sheet around the North Pole: Arctic Summers to be ice-free by 2013. Well worth a [more…]
20th Century
Happy Birthday, Ruby!
Above photo: My ruby laser with a ‘mirror alignment laser’ just off to the right hand side of the photo. A small amount of smoke in the air makes the alignment laser-beam visible. In the [more…]
Mathematics
Of Planets and fairground rides, Part Two
In previous parts we have covered the basics of Newtonian mechanics, there is a lot more here but the basics provide enough to at least start to use this sort of stuff. So lets have [more…]
Mathematics
Of Planets and fairground rides
In the last part we covered a little bit about the earth and the moon, we have established there should be a common centre of rotation as both rotate around this common centre. If our [more…]
Mathematics
He is heavy, he’s my planet
If you pick something up and lift it, this takes effort, if you let go it will fall, but why? We know objects, such as leopards, have a mass (m) as a fundamental property, we [more…]
Mathematics
Hang on a moment…
In part four we covered the basic principles of constant rotational acceleration, moment of inertia and related topics, in this part we will take this and demonstrate what this means. When we looked at constant [more…]
Physics
The Death of a Star
The star in question is Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetle Juice). Betelgeuse is what is known as a Red SuperGiant, a star so massive that if it were at the centre of our Solar System in place [more…]