Physics Stop

A cracked window

Marcus Wilson • Jan 08, 2021

• cracks,
• double-glazing,
• glass,
• harmonic motion,
• physics,
• Science,
• thermal stress

On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT have something to do with repeated encounters with footballs, tennis … Read More

The difference between science and engineering

Marcus Wilson • Dec 23, 2020

• Science

I’m often asked what the difference is between science and engineering. Or, put another way, why did I find working in a ‘School of Engineering’ when I’m a physicist (i.e. a scientist) so difficult sometimes? (I now work in  ‘Te Aka Matuatua – School of Science‘ at the University of Waikato.) The two disciplines blur a bit at the … Read More

Kane Williamson’s ‘soft hands’

Marcus Wilson • Dec 16, 2020

• Cricket,
• elastic collison,
• physics

I had the delight of being at Seddon Park on Friday 4 December, watching Kane Williamson on his way to 251 runs. It was a wonderful innings to watch and he’s a perfect example to try to copy if you’re learning to play the game. Part of his success is down to his ability to defend superbly. He’s able to … Read More

Repairing a hole in the wall with the diffusion equation

Marcus Wilson • Nov 20, 2020

• diffusion,
• drywall,
• filler,
• paint,
• Science

Last week child number 1 managed to put a hole in a plasterboard (‘gib’) wall. I wasn’t in the room at the time, but I believe it had something to do starting at one end of the house,  running down the corridor, through the bedroom doorway, doing a forward flip onto the bed and sliding feet first into the wall … Read More

Fancy coughing at your phone? Nicer than a swab up your nose

Marcus Wilson • Nov 03, 2020

• Science,
• Technology

The pandemic has certainly been a trigger for some really interesting science to be done. Here’s something that’s hit the headlines today – Artificial Intelligence can be used to detect COVID-19 from the sound of someone’s cough. If you want to read it, the full report is here, but unless you’re lucky enough to subscribe to IEEE you’ll … Read More

Scholarship Physics

Marcus Wilson • Oct 16, 2020

• scholarship physics

It’s that time of year when school students become seriously focused on exams. This year has been messy for student learning, and has affected some students more than others, but the NCEA external assessments and the Scholarship exams are going ahead pretty-much as normal. I’ve taken some interest in the Scholarship Physics exams over the past years. Read More

When analogies are taken too far: Spacetime is bent, but it’s not quite a stretchy membrane

Marcus Wilson • Sep 30, 2020

• Science

Last week I was asked by some school students about the nature of gravity. What is it? Isaac Newton, and a whole pile of textbooks following him, treat gravity as an attractive force between two objects. It’s a force that is proportional to the product of the masses of the two objects, and is inversely proportional to the distance between … Read More

Friction and the Anti-lock Braking System

Marcus Wilson • Sep 22, 2020

• ABS,
• braking,
• friction

Yesterday afternoon I had to call on my car’s anti-lock braking system (ABS). For reasons best known to its driver, a car pulled out of a side road right in front of me while I was driving home after work, and I needed to stop in a hurry. I rather think the car behind me had to rely on its … Read More

Post-communist Bulgaria, solar eclipses, and NZ Level 2 restrictions

Marcus Wilson • Sep 01, 2020

• Science

In August 1999, I had the opportunity to travel from the U.K. to Varna, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea coast, to view the European Total Solar Eclipse. Just why we ended up in Varna, as opposed to a plethora of other possibilities in Europe, is a bit of a long story, but a substantial part of it was a … Read More

Bad light stopped play

Marcus Wilson • Aug 26, 2020

• Cricket,
• light,
• sight,
• vision

One of the top challenges for physics in the modern era, along with Climate Change and explaining Dark Energy, has to be fixing the problem of bad light*. (I’m talking cricket – what else?) It’s a quintessentially English problem. It’s not raining, the pitch is perfectly playable, the spectators (COVID-19 notwithstanding) are enjoying themselves, but the umpires bring the … Read More