Marcus Wilson • May 25, 2012 •
This week has seen some icy mornings in Cambridge - a reminder that we are sliding into winter. Our heat pumps have been going, especially first thing in the morning to warm the place up a bit, and the cat has relocated his primary sleeping spot from a... Read More
Marcus Wilson • May 08, 2012 •
I learned a new word today: virga. It was used in a short article in one of the Sydney newspapers, discussing yesterday's weather. Virga is simply precipitation that evaporates before it hits the ground, and we had some here yesterday. So it was rainin... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Apr 30, 2012 •
One consequence of being a physicist is that you can't go anywhere without seeing physics calculations that need doing. I've just been to our library hunting down books on the medical technique of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which was an interesting exercise in itself, since one textbook I found also has a chapter on homeopathy. Hmm. So how much do … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Apr 24, 2012 •
With the coming of the colder evenings, we've had our new heat pump going. It's quite a powerful beast, as it has a large volume to heat, and it comes with a plethora of different settings - temperature, fan speed, air flow angle and so forth. It's taken some experimentation to get some decent settings on it.One thing that's clear … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Mar 19, 2012 •
Actually, I've been thinking a bit more about the 200% efficient LED I described last time. Maybe it can be a solution to global warming after all.The LED converts heat to light. Now, if one were to direct the light upwards, through the atmosphere and into space, it would escape the earth. Sure, it would eventually be absorbed … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Mar 15, 2012 •
A student of mine has drawn my attention to this article. (Full article in Physical Review Letters here, a more accessible summary of it in Physics World here.) It describes a light emitting diode (LED) that has a greater than 100% efficiency at converting electrical power to light. That is, put 30 picowatts of electrical power … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Jan 16, 2012 •
On Saturday night my wife and I went down to Te Awamutu to watch 'Sherlock Holmes' - there being no cinema in Cambridge :-( It was a moderately naff piece of film - more James Bond than Sherlock Holmes - though quite suitable for some mindless Saturday night entertainment so long as you were prepared to put Sir Arthur's original … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Jan 11, 2012 •
One of our recent Christmas gifts was an ice-cream maker. It's been very welcome, what with all those long hot sunny days we haven't had.Making ice-cream is pretty straightforward. Just bung in the ingredients and stir the mixture while having it freeze. That's what the machine does. Stirring makes sure large ice crystals don't form, and also aerates the mixture … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Nov 09, 2011 •
Our new house (new to us - it's twelve years old) can make some ferocious noises sometimes. It has some huge steel beams supporting the roof - these being held up as far as I can tell partly by steel supports and partly by concrete walls. I've been trying to work out just what is supporting what in the house … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Oct 25, 2011 •
Yesterday, being a warm, sunny Labour Day holiday (those words don't usually go together) we decided we needed to get out of the house and go somewhere interesting, and chose the Waitomo area. Didn't go into the show caves this time (done those a few times before) but chose to keep the bank account under a bit of … Read More