Marcus Wilson • Nov 15, 2012 •
Well, the eclipse yesterday was fun. There were enough patches of sky between the clouds to get some good views. I was pleased that the pinhole cameras I made out of miscellaneous cardboard tubes, tins, paper and tinfoil worked really well. Also, the t... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Nov 01, 2012 •
Have a good look at the photo. The pretty rhododendron to the left of the chair looks a bit odd. That's because it's a ghost shrub. No, our garden isn't haunted, and neither have I doctored the photo; it's an example of Pepper's Ghost - an illusi... Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • Oct 12, 2012 •
The subject of Mars is a popular one. Not only in science fiction but, of course, in real life, too. Curiosity’s presence on the red planet at the moment – you can look at interactive panoramas of Mars! – has… Read more › … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Oct 01, 2012 •
I haven't read ALL of Tolkien's work, but I suspect space-travelling hobbits don't feature anywhere. However, what do feature are hole-dwelling hobbits, and I had the fun of seeing their holes in the countryside near Matamata yesterday. The original se... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Aug 24, 2012 •
On Monday evening this week I managed to do a bit of time travelling while driving back home. I was driving back through one of those heavy showers that have been marauding around the place recently, with windscreen wipers full pelt on a rather wet roa... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Aug 13, 2012 •
In the last couple of weeks, I've been working with one of our technicians tracking down what has been going wrong with one of the experiments we get our third year physics students to do. It's on Brownian Motion. Specifically, analyze the movement of ... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Jul 30, 2012 •
I remember as a student being presented with the proof that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (at least, on a 2 dimensional flat surface). Although it's almost blatantly obvious, it can be formally proved through Calculus of V... Read More
Marcus Wilson • May 04, 2012 •
It's 'Wellness Focus' week here, and there are all kinds of wonderful activities going on to promote health among the employees of the University of Waikato. I've just finished a REV class, which has finished me off for the whole afternoon, I think. Yesterday, I had a free health check - where my blood pressure, cholesterol etc was measured, and … 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 18, 2012 •
This week I've started my Study Leave with a short visit to the University of Otago in Dunedin. Today, amongst other things, I had a quick tour of one of the atomic physics labs there. Recently, Mikkel Andersen's group has managed to trap a single atom of rubidium. It's quite a complicated process - you can read about it in … Read More