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Not So Elementary (the Cosmos, That Is)

Recently there are appeared a paper showing how Physics - Iron–Helium Compounds Form Under...

Carbon — to capture or not to capture

This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture...

The Azolla Event: when is a fern not a fern?

...

Betelgeuse, Gamow, and a Big Red Horse

There has been a lot of talk recently of Betelgeuse possibly going supernova this century or not...

Robert H Olley

Until recently, I worked in the Polymer Physics Group of the Physics Department at the University of Reading.

I would describe myself as a Polymer Morphologist. I am not an astronaut,

The dismal mathematics of economics

Feb 13 2010 | comment(s)

Blackboard qualitative proofs of the "existence" of, say, an equilibrium between demand and supply - beloved of economists trained in the maths of the department of mathematics rather than the maths of the departments of physics or engineering - are meaningless because they don't tell how big is big.

Now being at present in woolly monkey mode, I could a tail unfold about this comparison between the mathematics of mathematics and the mathematics of physics, but that would distract from the main point.

Real Time Wriggle!

Jan 29 2010 | comment(s)

Scheikunde

is Dutch for Chemistry, and literally means "Separation Science". Now, if one has a carpet made of 85% polypropylene and 15% wool, how does one go about separating them?

Have no fear! Nature already has a solution. I found these cocoons (about half a centimetre long) on the surface of said carpet, and decided to look at them under a video microscope. This is what we saw:

VIDEO

As you can see, these caterpillars emerged from the cocoons and resumed their analysis, selectively removing the wool fibres from the polypropylene matrix.

Solomon Woz Here?

Jan 13 2010 | comment(s)

A few days ago, I read Oldest Biblical Inscription Deciphered, Archaeologists Say by our News Staff, and found it fascinating. It takes one back to Solomon, who, according to the Bible, had a thousand wives (that’s includin’ concubines, I have to tell ya.) Now people like to embellish these stories, and my mother sometimes would sing this:

Oh Solomon, he had a thousand wives
And bein' a kind hearted fella,
He wanted all o' them
To lead contented lives
So he bought each mamma
A grand piana, ....

Learning to read - from age five or seven?

Jan 06 2010 | comment(s)

Research finds no advantage in learning to read from age five

says a press release from the world's southernmost university, the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Comparing children from Rudolf Steiner schools, who usually start learning to read from age seven, and children in state-run schools, who start learning to read at five, Dr Sebastian Suggate found that the later learners caught up and matched the reading abilities of their earlier-reading counterparts by the time they were 11, or by Year 7. Of his third series of experiments, he says:

An Even Stranger Gas

Jan 05 2010 | comment(s)

When Dmitri Mendeleev first published his table of elements in 1869 (picture), only 60 of these were known. One group in particular was absent, namely the inert gases. Now you may have heard this song:

"All these gases are inert
Helium, neon, argon.
I’ll sing this song until it hurts
Krypton, xenon, radon." **

Mathematics And The Three Leopard Cubs

Jan 02 2010 | comment(s)

Some years ago, I was watching a wildlife TV programme, where a mother leopard was leading her three cubs, and they encountered a bank. Two of the cubs jumped it on the first go, but the third struggled until it found a piece of overhanging vegetation which enabled it to take the bank in two leaps.

When one leaves school and enters university, one can find that leaps are required which can overtax the brain. I am always pleased to find books in maths and the sciences which allow one to make these leaps. In Mathematician’s Delight (Pelican 1943), W. W. Sawyer wrote: