Physics Stop

Colour blindness and Bayes’ theorem

Marcus Wilson • Dec 13, 2018

• Bayes' Theorem,
• colour blindness,
• x-inherited genes

Following from my last post, there’s more to say about colour blindness in my family. This time we’ll look at my side of the family.  My maternal grandfather was red-green colour blind. That means my mother is a carrier of red-green colour blindness, with a “faulty” (well, “alternative” would be better) X-chromosome.  And as a male, it meant I … Read More

Colour vision

Marcus Wilson • Dec 10, 2018

• colour blindness,
• red-green colour blind

We’ve known for a while that child number 1 (male) is red-green colour blind. This comes as no surprise – with his maternal grandfather being the same. The genes responsible lurk on the X-chromosome. That means his mother is a carrier of red-green colour blindness, and child number 1 had a 50:50 chance of picking up her faulty X-chromosome.  It … Read More

Hydrophobic cabbage

Marcus Wilson • Nov 26, 2018

• hydrophobic,
• waterproofing

Saturday afternoon saw a break in the rain, and I was able to get out into the garden. The first thing I did was to harvest a red cabbage for dinner. The nice bit of the cabbage is the tightly rolled leaves in the middle, but surrounding that are a whole lot of larger leaves, which I removed and left … Read More

Biological variability and Pakistani batting collapses

Marcus Wilson • Nov 21, 2018

• Cricket,
• science communication,
• Variability

So, yesterday we had our Science Communication students looking at social media and blogging in particular. Alison Campbell and I talked through what makes a good science blog, and the students got to explore sciblogs.co.nz and look for themselves*.  In the coming week, the students need to put up a blog entry themselves. (I’m afraid these will be private … Read More

Cell phones give you cancer. Yeah, right.

Marcus Wilson • Nov 15, 2018

• cancer,
• Cell Phones,
• radiation,
• risk,
• science communication

It’s been a couple of weeks since the NIH studies on mice, rats and cellphones hit the headlines.  The studies were released with perfect timing to be used in our Science Communication paper – a third-year level paper for science undergraduates on communicating science ideas well. In short, we had half the class look at what mainstream media said about … Read More

The difference between an engineer and a physicist

Marcus Wilson • Oct 20, 2018

• engineering,
• physics,
• software

As a researcher who has recently published an article in the elegantly-named journal ‘Biomedical Physics and Engineering Express’ (in other words, biology, medicine, physics, engineering all in one) it’s clear to me that the boundaries that we often like to use to define ourselves are rather blurry. I am a physicist (yes!) but also, at times, I have to drift … Read More

Static hair

Marcus Wilson • Oct 15, 2018

• static electricity,
• trampoline,
• Van der Graaf

It’s one of those annoying laws of nature that the times you want to do a demonstration of static electricity with a Van der Graaf generator are the times when the atmosphere is least suited to it. Damp conditions equal a damp demonstration. But yesterday was really good. No Van der Graaf generator needed – just a ten-month-old on a … Read More

Fuel consumption: fewer vehicles means less than fewer emissions

Marcus Wilson • Oct 11, 2018

• emissions,
• fuel efficiency,
• Traffic

So, school holidays are coming to an end.  My son is breathing a big sigh of dismay. And, like so many other commuters, so am I. I’ve enjoyed two weeks of being able to get to and from work (especially the ‘to’) without traffic hold ups and ‘having to go the long way around’.  My 23 km commute from Cambridge … Read More

New Zealand: It’s time to up our game on disability

Marcus Wilson • Sep 28, 2018

• disability access

I read with delight the announcement that the NZ government will now relook at how it funds those who care for family members with disability, and repeal section 4A of the NZ Public Health and Disability Act. That is a big step in the right direction. But it does need to be put into a broader context: when it … Read More

Sucking up Spaghetti

Marcus Wilson • Sep 26, 2018

• drag,
• drag coefficient,
• fluid flow,
• vacuum cleaner

No. I’m not talking about 6-year-old boys sticking one end in their mouth and sucking.  I’m talking about vacuuming-up old bits of uncooked spaghetti on the kitchen floor. So, on taking the vacuum cleaner over the kitchen floor at the weekend, I could see that there were a few broken strands of uncooked spaghetti to clean up, along with the … Read More