The above is a quote from 1955, from a guy called Alex Lewyt, who was then president of a vacuum cleaner company. Fifty-five years later I still have to plug mine into the mains. It is one of a number of predictions about future technologies that have proven over optimistic. I came across this while I […]
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In British Universities the all-important Research Excellence Framework (REF) is coming up. It is all important as how well a University does will determine how much money they get from the government. If we are assessed and found to be really good, we should get a bit more money from the government, but if we are […]
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Ponytails in space would be pretty unmanageable. Or at least that is my prediction based on a paper I have just read. The paper has just come out in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters, and is titled: Shape of a Ponytail and the Statistical Physics of Hair Fiber Bundles. First off, I should say that […]
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This was the title of a full page ad that appeared in many American newspapers one day in 1954. It was paid for the tobacco industry. This was at a time when there was already convincing evidence that smoking caused lung cancer, and public health authorities were waking up to the problem of lung cancer […]
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This week, we ran our biggest and busiest ever UCAS day; well certainly the biggest in my memory, and I have been at the Surrey Physics Department for a very long time. Put it this way, in my earliest departmental photos I had hair, and lots of it. Even my mother can’t remember me with […]
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I kind of thought that “To name is to define” is a quote from someone, but if so then Wikiquote has let me down, as I can’t find it. I am writing a grant proposal and so need to make my proposed research look ground breaking, novel, important, etc, etc. Getting funding is competitive, the […]
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