I studied physics because it explained things that I was interested in. It allowed me to look around and see the mechanisms making our everyday world tick. Best of all, it let me work some of them out for myself. Even though I’m a professional physicist now, lots of the things I’ve worked out for … Continue reading Helen Czerski: Storm In A Teacup
Sub Sea To Summit (Update)
They made it, and in an astonishingly short time—they conquered Ben Nevis while wearing an 80-kilogram diving suit, and reached their original crowdfunding target. You can take a look at more photos (and give some money if you haven’t already), at the Sub Sea To Summit JustGiving webpage: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/subseatosummit Click here to register a like … Continue reading Sub Sea To Summit (Update)
Sub Sea To Summit
So I’ve told you before about my friend Ginge Fullen, and his distinctly epic conquests of the highest points of every country in Europe and in Africa. You can find more about that in his interview over at the 7 Summits Project, and in my reviews of his two books Finding Bikku Bitti and Sic … Continue reading Sub Sea To Summit
Faeroe Islands
The whole group rises from the ocean, high and precipitous, surrounded by wall of lofty rocks, imposing on account of their wild aspect and the deep bays and gulfs which separate them from each other. The cliffs, in many cases, are so perpendicular, that the boats are let down by ropes, whilst the sailors clamber … Continue reading Faeroe Islands
Lake District: Skiddaw
Skiddaw Little Man (NY 266277, 865m) Skiddaw Man (NY 260290, 931m) 10.7 kilometres 740m of ascent On the way home from Yorkshire, a few months ago, I took a quick swerve into the Lake District to spend a couple of hours wandering up and down the tourist route on Skiddaw. Other priorities meant that I … Continue reading Lake District: Skiddaw
The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 4
This series of posts is about what the sky would look like to an observer travelling at close to the speed of light. In Part 1, I described the effects of light aberration on the apparent position of the stars; in Part 2, I introduced the effects of Doppler shift on the frequency of the … Continue reading The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 4
Latin Plurals: Nouns Ending In -a
First Latin scholar: Crispin, I have some fresh lime. Would you decline a tequila?Second Latin scholar: Certainly. Tequil-a, tequil-am, tequil-ae, tequil-ae, tequil-ā. Tequil-ae, tequil-ās, tequil-ārum, tequil-īs, tequil-īs. That’s a very old joke, referring to Latin first-declension feminine nouns. (My, what a laugh we used to have at the expense of those poor Classics students.) But … Continue reading Latin Plurals: Nouns Ending In -a
The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 3
This is the third of a series of posts about what the sky would look like for the passengers aboard an interstellar spacecraft moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, like the Bussard interstellar ramjet above. In the first post, I wrote about light aberration, which will cause the apparent direction of … Continue reading The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 3
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Stephen R. Wilk: How The Ray Gun Got Its Zap
I sometimes think that we should spend at least a little time explaining everyday manifestations of physics to undergraduates, so that they can talk about phenomena that appear in everyday lives. How The Ray Gun Got Its Zap (2013), is subtitled Odd Excursions Into Optics, which (combined with the manifesto above) pretty much covers what … Continue reading Stephen R. Wilk: How The Ray Gun Got Its Zap
The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 2
In my previous post, I described the visual appearance of the starry sky for an observer moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light—for instance, aboard a working Bussard interstellar ramjet, like the one pictured above. I’ll recap the terminology I established in that post, which comes from Special Relativity. We call the … Continue reading The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 2